
Problem Statement
There are quite a few guides out there on how to pass the exam above but they are either outdated or there are too many steps and recommendations to follow. I thought I would share 3 steps I did to pass this exam to benefit anyone who is on the same boat. These steps work pretty well for me and I am sure it is highly applicable to you, either if you just begin to learn about data engineering in Google Cloud Platform or want to obtain this certificate for professsional reasons. Before we begin, these are the 2 things that I really want to achieve before I kickstart my prep work 1 month ago:
- Pass the exam (duh) within 1 month of preparation. (I work full time professionally so 1 month was a sensible period for me)
- Document and reuse the knowledge to apply at work or for side projects reason. (This is important as I do a lot of online courses during my free time and I tend to struggle to remember where and what I learn after a while)
Tools and Cost
These are the tools that I use, most of them are free but the classes are not. You might argue that there are other free or cheaper methods out there but I personally prefer to pay a bit of premium for better services sometimes to save some of my time.
Tools :
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Note taking app : Notion. I have been using a lot of notetaking app such as EverNote, OneNote and Confluence until I found Notion this year and never look back ever since. Cost : FREE
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Learning platform : Google Certified Professional Data Engineer by Tim Berry at A Cloud Guru. I chose A Cloud Guru platform as I passed my AWS Cloud Practitioner exam previously using one of the lessons there and find those lessons really helpful. I also did quite a few courses on data engineering related to Google Cloud Platform using Coursera, but I don’t find them as effective as this one. Cost varies depend on how long you will take but let’s estimate based on 1 month period. Cost : $35 USD per month with 7-Day Free Trial for new sign up
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The exam itself : Google Professional Data Engineer. It consists of 50 multiple choice questions with total length of 2 hours. You can do it either online or at an exam centre, depending on your location. Google doesn’t tell you how much you score compared to AWS so you would only know you either pass or fail. I do hope all the readers here will always get a PASS whether you follow my steps or do it your own way 🙂 Cost : $200 USD
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Mock exam : Google Professional Data Engineer Exam by ExamTopics. The practice exams are very similar to the actual exam itself so highly recommend anyone to do it, especially if you are running out of time! It’s actually FREE of charge but I ended up paying the Contributor Access as the FREE version will ask for robot checks every 10 questions or so, it was kinda annoying to me and it distracted my focus on the exam questions itself. Cost : FREE or $16.99/month or $23.99/year.
The total cost add up to be just $35 USD if you exclude the 200 USD exam fees since Total = FREE (Notion)+ 35 (1 month + 7 days A Cloud Guru)+FREE (Examtopics if you don’t mind the robot checks) = $35 USD. This is based on the assumption that we will complete the course within 1 month and 7 days.
I believe that most of you kinda know what the 3 steps are by now based on the tools above, but let me go through each step in details.

3 Steps
Step 1 : Set a systematic training plan
Coming from an engineering background, I like to do things in a very systematic and structured way although my mind tends to do otherwise so having a structured plan was necessary for me to achieve my goals above. Personally, I find the most difficult part of obtaining all these certifications, regardless AWS, GCP, Azure or any other professional certifications is DISCIPLINE. Having constant distractions around us such as social media or frequent notifications really prohibit me to progress as fast as I would hope for. To combat my distractions, I set an imaginary timeline for a lot of things that I do in my life, having that always stresses me out a bit so I could cut down on my social media consumption and shift my focus back on things that require my immediate attention. I use the same strategy for this exam, remember we target to complete this exam within 1 month of preparation? So I looked through all the lesson syllabus on the course mentioned above. Based on the syllabus, I plan my imaginary target for each week so I could complete it within the target timeframe. I am working full time and my brain is normally done by end of each workday, so I only planned to study for this Certification during the weekend if possible, unless I couldn’t hit the target timeline by the previous weekend. My target was 8 hours per week, 4 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday. Why 4 hours? That is just the amount of deep focus hours I can do per day, you may adjust accordingly based on yours but trust me, 3–4 hours of deep focus on a weekend do require certain level of discipline in order not to get distracted to do something else instead so I would suggest you start with a reasonable number of hours. Let’s have a look at my actual timetable for this certification :

I created a timetable in Notion to anticipate and track my progress. Basically, the timetable is based on all the lessons in the course introduced above + mock Exam by ExamTopics. As you can see, the total hours are slightly more than 32 hours which aligns with my target of completing within 1 month with 8 hours of work per week. The Time column is the estimated time by the learning program itself, I normally play the video 1.5 or 2X speed so I tend to spend lesser time than the estimated time itself, sometimes I would stuck with some of the practical tutorial so the time turned out to be roughly equal. The Target Completion Date is the most important column, make sure you fill it up before you begin your learning as the imaginary timeline will make sure you are always on the right track. I will try to complete those lessons by the target completion date and try to do 1–2 lesson more if my brain allows to "convince" myself that I am way ahead of the schedule, it does make you feel good and boost your morale quite a bit 🙂
I also created a progress table below since the online lesson does show you how much you have completed, also wrote some of my comments based on my progress to keep myself progressing without giving up halfway.

A quick tip : If you are like me who tend to procrastinate sometimes but determine to complete the certification within 1 month, just book and lock down the exam date by paying the 200USD as early as possible. To make sure I could complete on time, I booked the exam date 1 week ahead of my imaginary deadline. You could do it 1 month ahead if you want 🙂 You will be surprised that you will still manage to complete and pass the exam with the tight deadline you set for yourself.
Step 2 : Use Notion as documentation portal
Remember our second goal which is to document down what we learn and reuse it whenever necessary? Notion comes in very handy to document down all the knowledge I learnt from the course without going through the videos all over again. As I also work professionally as a data engineer in my company, these notes come in very handy when I had to make design choice or stumble upon something that I recall learning from the video lessons. My team just started using Google Cloud Platform less than 6 months ago and these lessons have helped to accelerate my learning a lot. You might argue with me that it is a waste of time to document down what I learnt from the videos since we can always replay from the videos later and theoretically you can screen through the videos 2X speed and do the mock exam. Then, you will still pass the exam with minimal effort and time. You are absolutely right but personally I do not want to pay 200 USD for the sake of getting the certification and forgetting everything in, let’s say 6 months. I would have to go through all the videos again to recall my learning again. In Notion, there is this function called Toggle which is my all time favourite feature! It enables me to squeeze a lot of information in 1 page and also force my brain to do some active recall before I click the toggle button to have a peek of the content. Let’s have a look at how I organised all the contents :

You can see that I use Toggle extensively in my notes, I would split the notes into different sections and pause the lesson videos halfway to either write down the notes or just capture the video screenshot to save time. Unfortunately, I would not be showing the actual content itself under the subsequent Toggle as I would not want A Cloud Guru team to come after me for sharing the lesson content without their consent.
Having compiled all these in Notion has helped me to revise effectively before exams on all the essential topics, build up my confidence and also help me with my actual work professionally!
Step 3 : Do the mock exam twice
I highly recommend anyone who plans to take this certification to go through the mock exams by Examtopics. I started practicing one week before my exam date. It is split into two topics which are Topic 1 and Topic 2. Topic 1 has 163 questions and Topic 2 has 78 questions. Most of the questions in the actual exam are very similar to questions in Topic 1 as compared to Topic 2. You may skip Topic 2 and focus solely on Topic 1 if you are running out of time. There are no more case study questions in the actual exam itself so you can skip those questions as well. Personally, I finished both Topic 1 and Topic 2 since questions in Topic 2 are generally more straightforward and I could answer them really fast during my practice. By the way, do not trust the Solution provided by Examtopics entirely as some of the official answers were wrong, please look at the Discussion to get a better understanding of the actual answer and the reasoning behind. I read through all the discussions and understand better on why certain answers do not make much sense.
As usual, I utilise my favourite Notion app when I do the mock exam since I wanted to keep all my progress in 1 place. I did 50 questions in 1 go, went through all the discussions, marked my questions and understood what went wrong, then repeat until I finished all 241 questions.

On the day before the actual exam itself, I redid the 241 questions again with 50 questions every round and tracked down questions that I still got wrong even at 2nd attempt! Fortunately, I was able to get 227/241 questions right by the second attempt so those knowledge did sink into my mind.
Conclusion
I spend a lot of time to go through different online courses and sometimes struggle to recall some of the knowledge. These are the ways on how I could reinforce my learning as well as passing the certifications at the same time. You could apply the same tactics, not just on above GCP certification but on any certifications that you are planning to do in the future too! So these are the 3 things that I did to get the certification within 1 month :
- Set a systematic training plan
- Use Notion as documentation portal
- Do the mock exam twice
You may adjust accordingly based on your time and what you really want to get out of the certification. I sincerely hope that you are able to pass the exam with these tips and apply these knowledge at your work or side project! Feel free to comment if you adopt some of the tips outlined and pass the exams eventually! I also made a Youtube video here on a deeper dive of each of the steps outlined above, feel free to watch it if you have time. Good luck and all the best! I shall end this article with a quote that I really like :
You have to go wholeheartedly in order to achieve anything worth having. -Frank Lloyd Wright