In early 2024, I decided to take my cloud career to the next level. Already familiar with Azure and AWS, I felt it was time to master Google Cloud Platform (GCP) — a provider that’s rapidly shaping the future of DevOps, SRE, and automation.
What began with a curiosity turned into a clear goal:
Earn the GCP Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification and gain deep, production-ready skills in the GCP ecosystem.
🧩 Step 1: Understanding the Big Picture – Digital Leader (January 2024)
I started with the Google Cloud Digital Leader certification — a business-oriented exam that lays the foundation for understanding:
- Cloud concepts and digital transformation
- GCP products and use cases
- Responsible AI and sustainability in the cloud
This certification gave me a holistic view of GCP, including how cloud services map to business needs — a mindset crucial for DevOps and platform engineers.
🔧 Step 2: Getting Hands-On – February to March 2024
Once I passed the Digital Leader exam, I committed to 2 months of focused, hands-on work with the goal of preparing for the DevOps Engineer exam.
During this period, I dove deep into:
- ✅ CI/CD pipelines using Cloud Build, GitHub Actions, and Cloud Source Repositories
- ✅ Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform and Deployment Manager
- ✅ Monitoring and alerting with Cloud Monitoring (formerly Stackdriver)
- ✅ Service reliability concepts (SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, toil reduction)
- ✅ Containerization using GKE and Artifact Registry
I complemented this with Qwiklabs, Linux Academy, and the official GCP DevOps Engineer learning path.
🔥 Step 3: Final Push – April 2024
In the first two weeks of April, I focused on:
- Mock exams and practice tests
- Deep-diving into SRE whitepapers from Google
- Labs simulating real production issues and incident response
- Revising deployment strategies: canary, rolling, blue/green, etc.
These final steps gave me the confidence to approach the exam with clarity, not just memorization. I understood why each tool mattered and how to use it in production.
🏆 The Result
On April 17, 2024, I officially became a Google Cloud Professional DevOps Engineer.
This marks a major milestone for me — now certified in Azure (AZ-104), AWS (SysOps Admin), and GCP (DevOps Engineer).
💡 My Takeaways
- Start small – foundational certs like Digital Leader help align technical skills with business goals
- Be hands-on – real labs > passive watching
- Master SRE – it’s not just about tools, but about reliability culture
- Stay consistent – 1–2 hours a day over 2 months beats cramming
📣 Let’s Connect
If you’re preparing for GCP certs or building multi-cloud solutions, I’d love to connect.
You can reach me here or on LinkedIn.
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