Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certification: Exam Prep Guide 📚

I’m finishing 2024 with a Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification!🎇 In this article, I’ll share my preparation strategy.

Professional Data Engineer Certification Details ✅

A Professional Data Engineer makes data usable and valuable for others by collecting, transforming, and publishing data. This individual evaluates and selects products and services to meet business and regulatory requirements. A Professional Data Engineer creates and manages robust data processing systems. This includes the ability to design, build, deploy, monitor, maintain, and secure data processing workloads.

Here are the details about this certification exam:

Length: 2 hours

Registration fee: $200 (plus tax where applicable)

Exam format: 50–60 multiple choice and multiple select questions

Prerequisites: None

Recommended experience: 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using Google Cloud.

Valid for: 2 years

Preparing for the Exam 💡

Here’s how I’d recommend preparing for the exam:

• Check the **exam guide** to see which GCP services are covered on the exam.
• Complete the Data Engineer Learning Path on Google Cloud Skills Boost.
• Consult the official **Google Cloud docs**.
• I highly recommend the **Google Cloud Skills Boost labs **for valuable hands-on experience.
• **Review sample questions** to familiarize yourself with the format of exam questions.
• Consider attending a **webinar **for exam tips and insights from Googlers and industry experts.
• To review my knowledge, I completed Associate Data Practitioner Learning Path on Google Cloud Skills Boost. You can learn more here.

These books offer many practical scenarios and use cases — check them out if you have time:

• “Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Study Guide” by Dan Sullivan.
• “Data Engineering with Google Cloud Platform: A guide to leveling up as a data engineer by building a scalable data platform with Google Cloud” by Adi Wijaya.

This repository contains my personal notes for the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification exam, compiled from official Google Cloud documentation.

Practical Exam Tips 🎯

The exam consisted of 50 scenario-based questions focused on improving performance and minimizing costs.

The exam covered Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud DLP, Datastream, Dataprep, Data Catalogs, Dataplex, Cloud Composer, CMEK, Cloud KMS, Analytics Hub, Memorystore, Bigtable, External and BigLake tables, Dataproc, and Dataform, with a few questions on ML.

My suggestions are:

• Focus on key words in each question

Certain keywords in questions often indicate specific Google Cloud services. For example, “data mesh” suggests Dataplex; “low latency, time series data, or financial data” points to Bigtable; “ETL tool with visual interface” indicates Data Fusion; “windows” suggests Dataflow; “orchestrator for complex batch jobs” points to Composer; “data sharing with authorized users (internal and external)” suggests Analytics Hub; “globally-distributed database” indicates Spanner; “managed Hadoop/Spark service” points to Dataproc; “recipes for data cleaning/transformation” suggest Dataprep; and “assertions/data quality checks” point to Dataform; and so on.

• Eliminate obviously incorrect answers

Example Question: What transactional, relational data storage system is best suited for a globally accessible, mission-critical application? Which two products should you choose?

A. BigQuery (Not Transactional)

B. Cloud SQL

C. Spanner

D. Bigtable (Not Relational)

E. Datastore (Not Relational)

The correct answers for the transactional and relational data storage system are B and C. BigQuery is a data warehousing solution and is not designed for transactional workloads. Bigtable and Datastore are NoSQL databases.

Claim Your Merch! 🎁

After passing any Google Cloud Professional exam, be sure to check your Benefits section — you’ll find a voucher for merchandise there.

Screenshot showing the Google Cloud Certified benefits section in my CertMetrics account

So excited! My Google Cloud hoodie finally arrived.🤩

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding GCP topics, services, or docs. I’m happy to help.😊