The purpose of this qualification is to offer a pathway for graduates of the New Zealand Diploma in System Administration (Level 6) or those with trade experience to further develop their existing skills and migrate this knowledge into a cloud environment, including but not limited to cloud based storage, compute and networking in order to gain employment in IT specialist roles. The programme has been developed to ensure students gain experience with a variety of different cloud tools in simulated production environments, as well as learning to engineer their own virtual environments. This will benefit the IT Industry, ensuring they have graduates who are able to contribute to production environments, from the beginning of their employment. Graduates will be able to be employed in a position higher than entry level.

Graduates of the Diploma in Cloud Engineering (Level 7) will be able to:
Technical Skills: - Demonstrate advanced knowledge of a range of technologies in a cloud-based environment that meet organisational needs for storage, compute and networking. - Apply advanced planning and implementation techniques to migrate and manage directory, authentication and authorization services to a cloud environment, while meeting organisational needs. - Critically assess risks for security and isolation in a cloud environment to meet organisational requirements and use specialised knowledge to implement and manage multi tenancy. - Analyse and apply advanced knowledge to integrate on premises services with cloud platforms to configure a hybrid environment. - Apply research and design concepts in implementation and configuration of a platform to optimise business functionality and support multi-vendor Scenarios in a heterogeneous environment. - Develop advanced level scripting in multiple languages to support complex environments to provide automation and flexibility.
Core Skills: - Demonstrate advanced communication and presentation skills in a professional information technology context, including application of integrity, teamwork skills, and culturally appropriate behaviour, incorporating Te Ao Māori where possible. - Apply project, service and change management methodologies and techniques to achieve a desired outcome for a business.

Graduates may seek to extend their skills in administration via a transition into cloud solutions, multi-tenancy security of clouds and flexible infrastructures architectures. They can expand their knowledge into cyber-security, or DevOps, focussing further on software design where their cloud operational knowledge will be beneficial in the design process.

- Applicants must have successfully completed the New Zealand Diploma in System Administration (Level 6) or equivalent or have relevant trade experience such as 1-2 years' experience as an IT Server Administrator.
- Students who have English as a second language must demonstrate a level of English language competency equivalent to IELTS 6.0 Academic with no band less than 5.5.
- Prospective students will be interviewed to assess their ability to cope with the demands of the programme and potential to succeed.
- Students who enrol in the online programme will need access to a computer with prescribed basic hardware requirements as per marketing material, a microphone, and a reliable internet connection.