> which means that career advancement would require learning cloud architecture, cybersecurity, IAM, networking, etc.

I was going to suggest: we have a bunch of data scientists working on intrusion detection problems in cybersecurity, tied to an engineering organization instead of an IT organization. On the balance of considerations, I think it has a net positive impact. And I'm pretty sure plenty of other companies have something similar. Unfortunately, we also have an ongoing hiring freeze, so I can't recommend my own organization.