Google Cloud Platform is one such program that is giving tough competition to its counterparts Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
As the market penetration of Google Cloud Services is increasing by leap and bound, the industry is in dearth need of skilled and professional certified professional. Google Cloud Certification is one such program that endows you with all the capabilities to fetch good opportunities and could give your career a fine boost.
What is Google Cloud Certification?
Google Cloud Certification offers a well-constructed academic and practical pathway to learn about Google Cloud’s methodologies, work principles, and skills to make the maximum use of it. The certificate ensures that you are aware of Google Cloud’s standard methods and crack down the operational hurdles easily.
Levels of Google Cloud Certificates
The certificate is available in two levels:
- Associate level
- Professional level
Associate Level Google Cloud Certification
This certification, available in associate level, is Associate Cloud Engineer that tests your capabilities into the areas such as application deployment operation monitoring, and cloud protects maintenance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is basically a job-task based certification and best for entry-level Google cloud professionals. It is also considered as a foundation stone for further professional courses.
Pre-requisites for Associate Cloud Engineer certification – To go for this certification, you need to have considerable hands-on experience in GCP of a minimum of 6 months.
Your take away from this certification – Associate Cloud Engineer certification will help you learn:
- How to set up a cloud solution.
- How to plan and configure cloud solutions.
- How to deploy a cloud solution in real-time situations.
- How to configure access and security in your cloud space.
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
Professional level Google Cloud Certification
Professional level certifications, as the name suggests, tests advanced designing, developmental and implementation skills of test-takers. All the certificates of this category are job-role based.
Pre-requisites for professional level certification – To acquire any of the professional level Google Cloud certification, one needs not to meet any special criteria (except Professional Cloud Network Engineer and Professional Cloud Security Engineer). However, having 3+ years of industry experience along with Associate Cloud Engineer certification helps you gauge on the details easily.
- Professional Cloud Architect Certification
This professional certification helps an individual to leverage its knowledge in Google Cloud technologies while keeping a focus on a deep understanding of cloud architecture and Google Cloud Platform.
Your take away from the certification – Professional Cloud Architect certification will help you learn:
- How to conceive and plan a cloud architecture solution.
- How to do cloud solution infrastructure management.
- How design secures and compliance has driven cloud solutions.
- How to ensure operations’ reliability.
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
- Professional Data Engineer Certification
Professional Data Engineer empowers an individual with an advanced and data-driven understanding of the data life cycle. After this certification, a data engineer will be able to understand existing machine learning models easily and can frame cloud data solutions.
Your take away from the certification – Professional Data Engineer certification will help you learn:
- How to do data processing system designing.
- How to check the operations of the data processing system.
- How to check operations of machine learning models.
- How to ensure the quality of cloud solutions.
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
- Professional Cloud Developer Certification
Applications, mobile or web, has become an integral part of users’ life these days and Professional Cloud Developer certification helps you gain every nitty-gritty of cloud application formation, testing, and deployment.
Your take away from the certification – Professional Cloud Developer certification will help you learn:
- How to design cloud-native applications that are scalable and reliable for the users.
- How to do regress application testing and deployment.
- How to integrate Google Cloud Platforms in various areas.
- How to do application performance monitoring.
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English and Japanese
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
- Professional Cloud Network Engineer Certification
This certification will help you excel in your career with detailed knowledge of various architectures of Google Cloud Platform. To do this certification, you need to have at least 1 year of hands-on experience working with Google Cloud Platform or have detailed knowledge about networking principles.
Your take away from the certification – Professional Cloud Network Engineer will help you to learn:
- How to do designing, planning of a prototype GCP network
- How to implement GCP Virtual Private Cloud
- How to do effective network services configuration
- How to do hybrid interconnectivity implementation
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
- Professional Cloud Security Engineer Certification
This is an advanced level of Google Cloud certification that imbues high-end network security, testing, and configuration skills in the candidate.
Your take away from the certification – This certification will help you learn:
- How to configure access points within a cloud solution.
- How to configure and check the network and data security level.
- How to manage operations.
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
- Professional Collaboration Engineer Certification
By doing this certification collaboration engineers can easily leverage their understanding about mail routing, identity management infrastructure and cloud data access. This also deepens your knowledge about G-suite.
Your take away from the certification – Professional Collaboration Engineer certification will help you to learn:
- How to do effective planning and implementation of G suite
- How to manage various users, resources and team drive lifecycles
- How to manage to do end-to-end email management
- How to control and configure G suite services
Exam pattern
Duration – 2 Hrs
Languages – English
Format – Multiple choices and multiple select questions
What is the passing score of the certification?
Well, this is something which is known to anyone except the internal and external subject matters of the certification. The candidates will not be able to know how much they have scored. All they can know is whether they have cleared the certification or not.
What if I didn’t clear the exam?
In that case, you can take up the exam after 14 days of your previous exam date. If you again fail to get through, you need to wait for 60 days to make another attempt. Once you successfully clear the exam, a certification and Google Cloud certification hoodie will be delivered at your doorsteps.
How much Google Cloud Certificates cost you?
The cost of Google Cloud Certificates varies as per the course and its level.
Associate level certification cost
Associate Cloud Engineer – $125 USD
Professional level certification cost
- Professional Cloud Architect – $200 USD
- Professional Data Engineer – $200 USD
- Professional Cloud Developer – $200 USD
- Professional Cloud Security Engineer – $200 USD
- Professional Cloud Network Engineer – $200 USD
For how long the certification will be valid?
In normal conditions, each of the Google Cloud certifications will be valid for the two years from the date of issue. You can again go for certification once the current one-loss its validity.
Where do I need to appear for the exam?
All the Google Cloud certificate exams are available only at Kryterion testing centers. There are more than 1000 Kryterion testing centers spreading across 120 countries. Kindly refer to the center list before for applying for the certification.
Why you should go for Google Cloud certifications?
The world of IT is evolving by each passing day. Google Cloud certifications help an individual or organization to brush up the existing IT skills as per the latest technology model. By doing these certifications, you will be able to:
- Stand out of the crowd with your latest skills.
- Let the world believe that you have the well-testified skills and expertise
- Explore new career opportunities.
Tips to get through the Google Cloud Certification
Getting through the Google Cloud Platform is not an easy job. It demands a lot of hardship. The result of this certification doesn’t come as marks or percentage, so identifying the low performing areas is as tough as nailing the rock. Here are our expert’s tips s that you should implement while planning to crack the certification –
Make your basics clear –
Just as you can’t start making designer couture without knowing how to sew, you can’t learn the advanced Google Cloud technologies without knowing its basics. That is why it is recommended to clear your basics first. Learn about Google Cloud Platform essential from the guide offered by Google. Gain in-depth knowledge of Google Cloud storage and networking. Along with them, knowledge of App Engine, Compute Engine, and Kubernetes is also essential.
Some other key skills that you should own beforehand are:
- IAM Roles
- Stackdriver
- BigQuery
- ML algorithm
- Hadoop
- DataFlow
- GCS
- DataPrep and DataLab
All the certification modules are based upon these basic factors only. So, make sure that you have some or other prior knowledge of all these skills. If so, half of your job is done.
Gain practical experience – All your erudite knowledge will be of no use unless you don’t get hands-on experience of it. The same is applicable in the case of Google Cloud certifications. You need to gain hands-on experience about Google Cloud platform. Google provides you Qwicklabs on-demands. Make sure you make most of it. Try to learn real-time implementation of whatever you are studying for the exams.
Never overlook practice exam – Practice exam an ideal way to gain a real-time experience of exam way before the actual one. It is helpful to be aware of the actual exam pattern and learn to do time-management.
Gauge case studies well – Case studies are an integral part of the Professional Cloud Architect and Data Engineer certification exam. A major part of your question paper will be based upon various case studies. So, make sure you study them well before the final date of the exam comes. Exam guides have many case studies for your reference. So, don’t miss out any.
Enroll for a training course – A training course help an individual to accelerate the learning process and focus on what is essential. Training can be instructor-led or in-person as well. As these training courses have been designed with the key concepts of the related certification, they will help you polish your knowledge in a short and concise manner.
What are the expanded career options after a Google Cloud certificate?
A certification aids your reliability and credibility in your professional space and opens up the door of opportunities to which you don’t access previously. Google Cloud certifications also do the same. They leverage your credibility as a professional in every respect. You can aim for IT-related roles such as IT systems administrator, cloud solutions engineer, enterprise collaboration engineer, systems engineer, and data specialist.
In addition to this, you can also become a mentor to other Google Cloud certification aspirants and lead the way with your practical and conjectural knowledge.
Final words
Any certification establishes the fact that your skills are up-to-date and certified. Google Cloud certification also does the same along with open up new career avenues for you and accelerates your career graph. Taking up this certification will deepen your knowledge about various Google Cloud platform concepts.
All the industry giants such as Bloomberg, PayPal, 20th Century Fox, Twitter and many more are using Google Cloud platform these days. Don’t you want to the part of the league?
If “Yes” then go and get your Google Cloud certification today. Good Luck!
