Cloud-native and DevOps engineers are getting more attention in Thailand after Google announced US$1 billion in cloud infrastructure investment in 2024. The plan includes a data centre in Chonburi province and a cloud region in Bangkok. The project details come from Google's announcement, as reported consistently by Frontier Enterprise and Mingtiandi. They cite a Deloitte study saying the plan could support an average of about 14,000 jobs a year from 2025 to 2029. For IT workers and anyone thinking of switching careers, that figure is an estimate for the whole project. It is not a count of open engineering positions.
Google's investment plan and why it matters for cloud jobs
Google announced the plan at Government House. Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Google and its parent company Alphabet, spoke alongside Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was prime minister at the time. According to Mingtiandi, Google's first data centre in Thailand will sit in a WHA industrial estate in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) in Chonburi. Bangkok will host a Google Cloud region, a group of computing and storage resources linked by a high-speed network.
Frontier Enterprise reported that the investment is equivalent to 36 billion baht. Google had announced plans for a cloud region in Thailand as early as 2022. The aim is to let government agencies, small businesses, startups and large companies use computing and AI resources faster, and to keep data storage in line with local requirements. On the day of the announcement, Google did not disclose technical details of the data centre.
The Deloitte study, as described in Google's announcement and reported by both outlets, estimates that the investment could add up to US$4 billion to Thailand's gross domestic product (GDP) by 2029. Both the GDP figure and the 14,000 jobs a year are forecasts, not actual results. Neither says how many of the jobs are engineering roles, so they describe the project as a whole rather than the job market for this field.
The plan builds on a cooperation agreement between Google and the Thai government signed in November 2023. It commits to building digital infrastructure, supporting responsible AI, promoting cloud-first policies and widening access to digital skills. Mingtiandi also reported that about three months earlier, Google announced a partnership with Gulf Edge, a subsidiary of Gulf Energy Development, on sovereign cloud. That service runs in an environment chosen by the customer, without a connection to a Google Cloud region or the public internet.
On skills, Frontier Enterprise reported that Google had trained more than 3.6 million people in Thailand in the five years before the announcement. It aims to support AI skills for another 150,000 people by 2026. Its Gemini Academy programme has trained 20,000 teachers since 2023. These are Google's own targets and results, and no independent report has confirmed them.
Asia-Pacific DevOps services market forecast to keep growing
Market research firm Cognitive Market Research expects the Agile and DevOps services market in Asia-Pacific to grow by an average of about 16.5% a year (compound annual growth rate, or CAGR). The report's pages give different forecast periods, all within 2024 to 2034. It splits the market into cloud-based and on-premises deployment, into public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud, and by company size.
This is a private research firm's forecast for the whole region, not a Thai figure. The report does not break out Thailand, and country-level data and market size in US dollars require buying the full report. It cannot be compared directly with the Thai market. What it does suggest is that these services are expected to keep expanding for several years.
Thailand's cybersecurity spending rises with cloud adoption
Gartner announced in September 2024 that end-user spending on information security in Thailand would reach 18.4 billion baht in 2025. That is up 12.3% from an estimated 16.4 billion baht in 2024. Worldwide spending is forecast at US$212 billion, up 15.1% from an estimated US$183.9 billion in 2024. All of these are forecasts published in advance, not actual 2025 spending. They are taken from The Nation's report of a Gartner press release.
Shailendra Upadhyay, Senior Research Principal at Gartner, said persistent threats, the move to the cloud and a shortage of skilled staff are pushing security up corporate budget lists. They are also pressing chief information security officers (CISOs) to raise budgets.
Gartner also estimated that the cloud security tools market, covering CASB and CWPP products, will reach US$8.7 billion in 2025, up from a forecast US$6.7 billion in 2024. Growing use of AI and generative AI is expected to lift security software spending by about 15%. Security services such as consulting and managed services are expected to grow faster than other segments because of the global shortage of cyber staff. Gartner also expects that by 2027, 17% of cyberattacks will involve generative AI. The figures point to a market trend: companies that move to the cloud also need more people to look after security.
What can be confirmed about engineering jobs so far
The main figure available is the project estimate of 14,000 jobs a year from Google's plan, covering 2025 to 2029 as a whole. It does not say how many are engineering roles. Job counts and salaries for this field in Thailand do not appear in the information used for this report.
People interested in the field should therefore check real job listings from different companies to see the skills and qualifications employers actually want. Developments to watch are progress on the Chonburi data centre and the Bangkok cloud region, and the results of the cloud policy agreement with the government. These will decide when jobs open and how many there will be.
Source: Google (investment plan and Deloitte study, as reported by Frontier Enterprise and Mingtiandi), Cognitive Market Research (Asia-Pacific Agile and DevOps services market) and Gartner (information security spending forecast, as reported by The Nation from a Gartner press release).
This article is adapted from ViewNews' Thai-language report.
