Google is pitching itself against banks in the battle for Cloud talent

If there's a skillset that will get you a job with either a bank or with Google now, it is cloud engineering, or experience of working with cloud providers. - It's mid-August, and even in the quiet period for hiring, cloud jobs have gone wild.

Google in particular is ramping-up cloud recruitment. In the past week alone, the technology giant has released over 20 new cloud vacancies in London, leading to 40 London-based cloud opportunities at Google in total. They include roles for a head of strategy and operations at Google Cloud (experience at a strategy consulting firm, investment bank, or corporate desirable) and for a head of of engineering for Google Cloud professional services (wanted to 'grow a team of cloud engineers across EMEA).

It's not just London. In New York, Google has 80 cloud vacancies open, around half of which were again posted in the past week. They include a global marketing lead for the financial services industry (wanted to, 'refine all marketing activities required for Google Cloud to become the preferred cloud for Financial Services.').

As we noted in April,  Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud's new CEO intends to hire more staff to his department, particularly customer-facing staff who can help add cloud clients. When Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported its second quarter earnings in July it said that cloud and search had been its biggest areas of hiring in the previous quarter. 

Just as Google ramps up its cloud hiring, however, banks are doing the same. JPMorgan has a cloud engineering hub in Seattle and wants to hire another 50 developers this year. Goldman Sachs is currently looking for cloud engineers to work for its Marcus retail bank and for its software engineering platform. Michael Steliaros, Goldman Sachs’ Global Head of Quantitative Execution Services, recently said cloud is the most exciting innovation of the moment and JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon devoted a long section of his most recent shareholder letter to extolling its benefits. 

Google Cloud already has financial services customers, including HSBC, who it's been working with since 2017. However, cloud jobs at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs typically require experience of working with AWS or Microsoft Azure. Google is chasing more financial services cloud customers after launching Anthos to provide advanced security and open architecture supporting multi and hybrid cloud customers earlier this year.

Speaking off the record, one London finance recruiter said banks and Google are chasing the same cloud talent, but that Google tends to be more choosy. "They are the leading edge and will only hire from banks if banks themselves have a particularly strategic approach to cloud platforms."

Jobs posted on eFinancialCareers suggest that professionals helping leading banks migrate services to the cloud can earn £700 ($852) a day in London.

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