Tips to pass the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certification exam

As most machine learning projects and big data analysis are switching to the cloud, the need for professionals who can effectively build data solutions in the cloud is significantly increasing. With GCP Professional Data Engineer Certificate, you can demonstrate that you have adequate skills and knowledge to design and build data processing systems and create machine learning models on Google Cloud Platform.

Recently, I passed this certification exam with nearly three months of studying: I do not have 3+ years of experience as recommended by Google to pass this exam, and it has been only 6 months since I have started working on the cloud at my company. I think the key to my success was just studying right for this exam.

In this short article, I want to share some tips on how to prepare for this exam and pass it successfully. I cannot guarantee that you will definitely pass the exam if you follow these tips, but I strongly believe that these tips will surely increase the probability of your success.

Tip 1/Step 1: Complete the specialization at Coursera “Data Engineering with Google Cloud Professional Certificate”

In the beginning, you should get familiar with Google Cloud by taking the “Data Engineering with Google Cloud Professional Certificate in Coursera. I think this is a perfect starting point for the preparation for the test.

I highly recommend that you do not rush to complete the course. While taking each lesson, also study the documentation related to the topic. For example, if you take a lesson about “Dataproc”, study the relevant Google documentation about this service. You do not need to study and understand all the service’s documentation at this stage (which is impossible, I think 😅) but try to understand about 30–40% of the documentation, especially the “Concepts” part. And lastly, and most importantly, do practical exercises: create and run the service in GCP and see how it works. Do not just do it once, but at least twice or three times. Coursera has excellent Qwiklabs for this, and you can easily leverage it.

Tip 2/Step 2: Read an excellent book “Professional Data Engineer Study Guide”

I can say that this book contains nearly all the necessary information required to pass the exam, and found it the best source of learning. It has well-organized chapters about GCP services and provides many key points you should remember while solving the test. At the end of each section, there are tests on what you have learnt. I found these tests very close to the actual test, and it helped me a lot to prepare for the test. To tell the truth, after reading this book, I have been able to improve my knowledge by about 40–50%, and my results in the mock test significantly improved.

Furthermore, at this stage, I highly recommend that you do not just finish the book but also study Google documentation related to each chapter and topic at the same time. At this stage, try to understand about 50–60% of documentation, especially the “Concepts” and “Best practices” part.

Tip 3/Step 3: Read “Google Cloud Platform in Action”

You may find this book is old, but it is very useful and informative. This book can teach you the ways to deploy scalable and reliable applications on GCP, which is an important topic in the exam. Furthermore, this book has practical guidelines with the help of which you can also exercise and run the GCP services and deepen your knowledge. Lastly and most importantly, this book shows how to maximize storage services and manage containers in Kubernetes, which is very useful for the exam. Try this book!!

And again, (😅) at this stage also, do not forget to deepen your knowledge by reading Google documentation. Try to revise what you have learnt until now in the documentation and try to increase your understanding in the documentation to 70–80%.

Tip 4/Step 4: Take the Udemy course “Complete Google Data Engineer and Cloud Architect Guide”

After completing the previous steps, you can take this course to revise what you have learnt until now and deepen your knowledge in each GCP service. This course is very informative, and I found it very useful. I have been able to understand many key points in GCP services in this course. Most importantly, this course provides very good lessons on Hadoop Ecosystem. Study this section very carefully because this can greatly help you understand the questions in the exam..

Tip 5/Step 5: Practice the tests in the book “Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Practice Tests”

At this stage, start practicing the actual tests by reading the book, “Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Practice Tests”. This book does not only provide you with questions but also answers with explanations. Do not just solve and move to the next question but try to understand each question and read related documentation if you cannot solve the question, and most importantly, remember the questions with answers. You may face the same or very close questions in the exam 😉.

Tip 6/Step 6: Practice tests in “ExamTopics”

This site is an excellent source for practicing tests since it provides many actual exam questions. To tell the truth, although I found many answers to the questions wrong (since it has been solved by “their experts” 😉), I have been able to familiarize myself with many questions, exercised a lot and reviewed many topics and documentation if I could not find answers to the questions while using this site.

AND REVISE THE DOCUMENTATION ONCE MORE AND TAKE THE EXAM!!!

Further notes by the author

I have spent a lot of time preparing for the exam and tried very hard learning many materials by following the above-mentioned steps. However, it is worth mentioning that my surrounding environment has also helped me a lot in passing this exam for a short period of time. I am fortunate to work at Japan Data Science Consortium (JDSC), the company which actively utilizes Google Cloud Platform for building machine learning models and doing big data analysis. By working at this company every day, I have actively engaged in data science analysis on GCP and improved my knowledge on this platform.Furthermore, I am surrounded by several experts in the data science field and proud owners of the certification (e.g. Keisuke Hashimoto, Shimpei Ohsugi, Momota Sasaki, Takuto Sugisaki). While working and consulting with them constantly on building scalable, maintainable, and reliable applications on Google Cloud Platform, I have significantly improved my data engineering skills. This has also helped me a lot in passing this prestigious exam. It is very pleasant to work at this company and with all these people.