Google Cloud (Google LLC)
Cloud certifications organised into foundational, associate and professional tiers, with a strong emphasis on data and machine learning roles.
Google Cloud runs a compact certification programme: one foundational exam, a small set of associate exams, and a well-regarded professional tier. Unlike most vendors, Google does not publish a numeric pass mark, and results are reported simply as pass or fail.
Google also does not assign codes to its exams, so the shorthand used across the industry — ACE for Associate Cloud Engineer, PCA for Professional Cloud Architect — is community convention rather than an official identifier. We label those badges accordingly.
The professional exams lean heavily on case studies. Several exam guides ship with fictional company scenarios published in advance, and reading them before exam day is one of the highest-value things a candidate can do.
Foundational1
Entry-level credentials that validate core concepts and vocabulary.
Associate3
Role-based credentials for practitioners with hands-on experience.
Professional9
Advanced credentials covering design, scale and trade-off decisions.
Filter by practice availability, category, level or exam code. Retired exams are hidden by default.
13 exams
The hands-on associate exam: setting up a cloud environment, planning and configuring solutions, deploying and operating workloads, and configuring access and security.
Google’s flagship architecture exam: designing and planning cloud architectures, managing infrastructure, designing for security and compliance, and ensuring operational reliability.
Designing and operating data systems on Google Cloud: processing system design, ingestion and transformation, storage selection, analysis enablement and workload automation.
Production machine learning on Google Cloud: framing problems, building and scaling models on Vertex AI, serving them reliably, and automating and monitoring the pipeline.
A business-oriented introduction to Google Cloud: digital transformation, data and AI capabilities, infrastructure modernisation, and the trust and security model.
Securing Google Cloud environments: access configuration, boundary protection and secure communications, data protection, security operations, and compliance support.
Site reliability engineering on Google Cloud: bootstrapping an organisation for DevOps, building CI/CD pipelines, applying SRE practices, and monitoring and optimising services.
An associate-level data exam covering ingestion and preparation, analysis and presentation, pipeline orchestration, and the governance side of managing data on Google Cloud.
Google Cloud networking at professional depth: designing and prototyping networks, implementing VPCs and network services, hybrid interconnectivity, and network operations.
Building cloud-native applications on Google Cloud: designing for scale and reliability, building and testing, deploying, integrating managed services, and operating what you ship.
Managed databases on Google Cloud: designing scalable database solutions, managing operations and migrations, and running a database estate across engines and regions.
Administering Google Workspace at associate level: user and resource lifecycle, service configuration, endpoint and data protection, and day-to-day operational support.
Advanced Google Workspace administration: planning deployments and migrations, securing the domain, automating administration, and supporting a large user population.
How the Google Cloud ladder is structured, from entry point to the top tier.
Entry-level credentials that validate core concepts and vocabulary.
Role-based credentials for practitioners with hands-on experience.
Advanced credentials covering design, scale and trade-off decisions.
Google Cloud exams with an available question bank. Each bank shows its source, licence and answer-support coverage.
Categories and topics that run through the Google Cloud catalog.
This directory currently lists 13 Google Cloud exams across 3 levels (Foundational, Associate and Professional). Google Cloud adds and retires exams regularly, so treat this as a working map rather than a permanent one.
Google Associate Cloud Engineer is the usual starting point — it is the most widely taken associate-level exam in the Google Cloud programme. The hands-on associate exam: setting up a cloud environment, planning and configuring solutions, deploying and operating workloads, and configuring access and security.
The best-known active options in this directory include Google Associate Cloud Engineer, Google Professional Cloud Architect and Google Professional Data Engineer. Compare their levels, syllabus domains and role focus before choosing one.
Yes — 13 Google Cloud exams have 3,287 practice questions in total. 2,348 questions currently carry an explanation. Every bank is labelled with its source and licence; 13 community-contributed banks are available.
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