Google Cloud Developer (Professional)
Build scalable, cloud-native applications using Google Cloud recommended practices. Practice 52 comprehensive scenario questions covering Cloud Run, GKE, Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions, Firestore, Secret Manager, Cloud Build, and Cloud Trace.
Official Exam Specification & Quick Facts
Question Difficulty Breakdown
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Exam Guidelines & Simulation Rules
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
The exam features 50-60 scenario questions within 120 minutes. Registration costs $200 USD, with a scaled passing grade around 70%. It assesses technical expertise in building cloud-native applications, APIs, secure deployment pipelines, and observability on Google Cloud.
The curriculum includes: (1) Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native apps (~25%), (2) Building and implementing microservices (~23%), (3) Deploying applications (~20%), (4) Integrating Google Cloud services (~17%), and (5) Application performance monitoring (~15%).
Cloud Functions (2nd Gen) is built on top of Cloud Run and Eventarc, supporting event-driven serverless code snippets. Cloud Run allows deploying complete containerized HTTP web servers, handles multi-concurrency (up to 1,000 requests per container), and supports custom runtimes.
If a subscriber fails to acknowledge a message after a configured maximum delivery attempts, Pub/Sub forwards the toxic payload to a dead-letter topic. This unblocks the primary queue while preserving failed messages for debugging and replay.
Artifact Registry securely stores and scans OCI container images and language packages. Cloud Build executes automated build, test, and release pipelines defined in `cloudbuild.yaml`, deploying verified images to Cloud Run or GKE.
Use Secret Manager to store database credentials, API tokens, and certificates. Applications read secrets dynamically at startup via Secret Manager API or inject them directly into container environment variables/volumes in Cloud Run and GKE.
Cloud Trace collects distributed tracing data from applications via OpenTelemetry. It generates latency distributions and waterfall graphs across microservices, pinpointing slow database queries or remote RPC calls.
Canary deployment releases updates to a small percentage of traffic before full rollout. In Cloud Run, developers execute `gcloud run services update-traffic` to split traffic (e.g., 90% to current stable revision, 10% to new canary revision).
Workload Identity maps a Kubernetes ServiceAccount (KSA) inside a GKE cluster to a Google Cloud IAM ServiceAccount (GSA). Pods automatically receive short-lived OAuth tokens, completely eliminating vulnerable long-lived JSON private keys.
Firestore supports atomic operations via batch writes and ACID transactions. Security Rules enforce authentication and data validation directly at the database layer, evaluating incoming requests based on user token claims and document state.
The certification is valid for two years from the pass date. Recertification is required every 24 months to demonstrate competency with the latest developer tooling, APIs, and frameworks.
Certified Cloud Developers work as Senior Software Engineers, Cloud Application Architects, and Full-Stack Cloud Specialists, with average US salaries ranging from $140,000 to $180,000 annually.