From AWS Architect to Blockchain Infrastructure Lead: anyone made this switch?

Hey guys!

I am a AWS architect for about 4 years now worked for mostly enterprise stuff, cloud migrations, lots of Kubernetes and Terraform. Pretty comfortable with the whole distributed systems thing at this point.

Since few months, blockchain infrastructure roles are keep appearing on my LinkedIn and the numbers are... well, let's just say they're hard to ignore 😅

Thing is, I know basically nothing about blockchain beyond the typical "it's distributed ledger" stuff everyone says. Been reading about validator nodes and it seems somewhat similar to managing stateful apps? But honestly not sure if that's just wishful thinking on my part.

I can automate deployments, I've migrated everything from legacy monoliths to microservices, and I spend most of my time writing infrastructure as code. But I have little to no idea about setting up a validator or node orchestration in the blockchain world.

What I'm curious about:

Is this transition actually doable or am I being naive?
How much of my cloud stuff actually translates over?
Anyone here made a similar jump? What was the hardest part?
Where the heck do you even start learning this stuff?

I saw job post for Kubernetes experience for blockchain node management, which I think is a overlap and cloud migration experience seems relevant since companies are moving to Web3 infrastructure.

But then I see requirements like "validator setup" and "blockchain protocol knowledge" and my imposter syndrome kicks in hard.

Real talk - is this just FOMO or is there something here? The money's obviously attractive but I don't want to waste months learning stuff that won't actually help me transition.

Would love to hear from anyone who's been down this path or is thinking about it too. What am I missing? What should I be focusing on first?

Thanks!

Hey! I made this exact transition 8 months ago. Trust me, your AWS skills are way more valuable than you think.

I was managing ECS clusters and auto-scaling groups before this. Now I run validator nodes for three different networks. The biggest surprise? Setting up a validator is basically deploying a stateful application with extra security layers.

Your Kubernetes experience directly translates. I use the same monitoring tools - Prometheus, Grafana, alerting rules. The difference is instead of watching CPU and memory, you're tracking block production, missed attestations, and validator uptime.

The hardest part wasn't technical. It was learning the economics. Unlike traditional infrastructure where you optimize for cost, here you optimize for rewards and slashing avoidance. Miss too many blocks? You lose staked tokens.

Started with testnet validators using my existing AWS setup. Within 6 weeks, I was confident enough to apply. My current company needed someone who understood cloud infrastructure AND blockchain. They hired me specifically because I knew how to automate deployments and scale infrastructure.

Pro tip: Learn one consensus mechanism deeply first. I picked Ethereum's proof-of-stake because the documentation is solid. Everything else builds from there.

The money's real. Base salary jumped 35%, plus I earn staking rewards on company validator nodes. Remote work is standard too.