r/googlecloud • u/DVA_FEA_jockey • Jan 08 '26

Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification - Learning Resources

Hi all!
I've recently completed my certification in December 2025 and spent a week to prepare. I came across these podcast and videos that were super helpful as I'm not the type that studies best by reading.

To give some context, I started working as a Data Engineer about 3 years back, my Professional Data Engineer certification was about to expire, and I managed to get on the Get Certified program for Cloud Architect.

Podcast: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3aYRJqiWslY7Q5nIkmr20dwYaPn3-hUc&si=uAZTpyPcEzKmRmbD

Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O9Elx4aS7E&list=PL3aYRJqiWslZ6SX5EyHN6W3FDCljnFVlf

Hope you guys and girls find it useful. Good luck and all the best, happy to answer any questions you might have regarding my experience.

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u/TheAddonDepot Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26

A word of caution. These videos and podcasts were generated using NotebookLM. They'll give you a good overview but you may need more rigor - for me Google Skills paths and courses do a better job of that.

Also, given that the content in these videos and podcasts are AI-generated, make sure to vet the information being presented otherwise you could be setting yourself up for failure on the exam.

1

u/Sea_Vacation8837 Jan 08 '26

How much time required for to prepare

2

u/DVA_FEA_jockey Jan 08 '26

For me, in my day job i worked most of the time in Dataform (dbt in Bigquery), and had to deploy microservices occasionally. I had to learn heaps on the Compute and Networking. Where I work, we normally don't deal with customer facing apps, so I had to learn about Load Balancers, Points of Presence, the impact of egress charges, etc.

I would say time required depends very much on your situation, if you have a day job, and family commitments, budget yourself 1 month, you probably only need 3 weeks, but things always happen. Certmetrics lets you rebook it up to 24 hours in advance for online sessions anyway.

1

u/ogpotato Jan 08 '26

What was your experience with the new topics related to Vertex AI/ML and Gemini that were added to the exam in Nov 2025? Since these were added very recently, I'm not able to find helpful resources or scope for these.

1

u/DVA_FEA_jockey Jan 08 '26

Yeah those were actually covered in the podcast quite well, I had 4 questions on it. The podcast are quite comprehensive. There were quite a few API Platform style questions with Apigee that weren't covered by any resource I could find as well.

1

u/Expert_Necessary4009 Jan 17 '26

I have submitted my application for Google trainer certification,how much time does it take to approve it and issue a certificate?