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Google Cloud · Foundational

Google Cloud Digital Leader

Google Cloud's foundational credential: digital transformation, data, AI, infrastructure modernisation, trust and operations.

Free practice: 205 questions written to the official exam guide, with the diagnostic, practice papers, timed mocks, a study plan and an explanation on every answer.

Official exam page

Find out where you stand on Google Cloud Digital Leader

20 questions drawn in the exam’s own domain weights. You get a report straight away: your score against the pass mark, where the points went, and what to study first.

Questions
20
Time
about 20 minutes
Cost
free

Your email

Your answers save as you go, and the report stays in your record. A new email needs no code.

· your answers stay on this device and you can save the report at the end.

The course

The diagnostic shows where you stand. Then you learn the syllabus chapter by chapter, answer that chapter’s questions, and move on. When every chapter is mastered, you sit full timed mocks in the real exam’s shape.

13 chapters, about 10 hours in all. Each is a 45-minute study session with quick checks, then a 10-question quiz on that chapter.

Digital transformation with Google Cloud18% of the exam

  1. Why the cloud is transforming business45 min
  2. Fundamental cloud concepts45 min

Exploring data transformation with Google Cloud18% of the exam

  1. The role of data in transformation45 min
  2. Google Cloud data management products45 min
  3. Analytics, business intelligence and streaming45 min

Innovating with Google Cloud artificial intelligence18% of the exam

  1. AI and ML fundamentals and business value45 min
  2. Google Cloud's AI offerings45 min

Modernise infrastructure and applications with Google Cloud18% of the exam

  1. Moving to the cloud: migration and compute terms45 min
  2. Infrastructure offerings and APIs45 min

Trust and security with Google Cloud18% of the exam

  1. Fundamental cloud security concepts45 min
  2. Google Cloud's layered security and trust45 min

Scaling with Google Cloud operations10% of the exam

  1. Controlling cloud costs and the resource hierarchy45 min
  2. Modern operations, reliability and resilience45 min

About the Google Cloud Digital Leader exam

The Cloud Digital Leader is Google Cloud's foundational certification. It is for people who need to understand Google Cloud's products and how they support an organisation's goals, without being the ones who build on them: business leaders, sales and customer teams, project and programme managers, and technical people who want the landscape before the Associate Cloud Engineer.

The exam is organised around digital transformation: what cloud changes for a business, how data becomes value, how Google Cloud's AI fits, how infrastructure and applications are modernised, how trust and security work in the cloud, and how operations scale. The domains are weighted almost evenly, so nothing can be skipped.

No prerequisites and no coding. It is a vocabulary and judgement exam, and the free learning path covers it.

The exam at a glance

Questions
50 to 60 questions, multiple choice and multiple select
Time
90 minutes
Pass mark
Not published by Google; pass or fail is reported
Exam fee
About US$99
Valid for
3 years
Where you sit it
Online proctored or test centre
Prerequisites
None

As published in the vendor’s exam guide at the time of writing. Fees vary by country and change; the vendor’s page is the source of truth.

What is on the exam, domain by domain

  1. Digital transformation with Google Cloud

    Why organisations move to cloud, the shared responsibility and shared fate ideas, the difference between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and how Google Cloud positions itself.

    18% of the paper

  2. Exploring data transformation with Google Cloud

    Structured, semi-structured and unstructured data; databases, warehouses and lakes; BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Spanner, Bigtable, Firestore and where each fits.

    18% of the paper

  3. Innovating with Google Cloud artificial intelligence

    AI and ML basics, pre-trained APIs versus custom models, Vertex AI, generative AI on Google Cloud, and responsible AI.

    18% of the paper

  4. Modernise infrastructure and applications with Google Cloud

    Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, App Engine, serverless, containers, APIs and Apigee, and the migration paths.

    18% of the paper

  5. Trust and security with Google Cloud

    Identity and access, encryption, the zero-trust model, compliance, data residency and Google's security infrastructure.

    18% of the paper

  6. Scaling with Google Cloud operations

    Financial governance, cost management, the pricing models, SRE ideas, monitoring and logging, and the support and sustainability programmes.

    10% of the paper

How to prepare

  1. Follow Google's free Cloud Digital Leader learning path on Skills Boost; it maps one course to each domain.
  2. Build a service map: for each family (compute, storage, database, data analytics, AI, networking, security) know the two or three Google Cloud products and one sentence on when to pick each.
  3. Learn the data products with care: BigQuery versus Cloud SQL versus Spanner versus Bigtable is asked repeatedly.
  4. Read Google's Cloud Adoption Framework and its shared fate model; the transformation and trust domains lean on them.
  5. Twenty to thirty hours is typical. Sit two timed practice papers above your target before booking.

Sample questions

Three questions in the exam’s style, written by Square 1 against the published domains. They are ours, not the vendor's. The answer and the reasoning are under each one; the practice papers on this page draw from a bank written the same way, with an explanation on every question.

  1. Question 1 · Exploring data transformation with Google Cloud

    An analytics team needs to run SQL over petabytes of historical sales data without managing servers, paying only for the queries it runs. Which Google Cloud service fits?

    1. Cloud SQL
    2. BigQuery
    3. Cloud Bigtable
    4. Cloud Storage

    Answer: B. BigQuery is the serverless data warehouse for large-scale SQL analytics with on-demand pricing. Cloud SQL is a managed relational database for transactional workloads, Bigtable is a NoSQL store for high-throughput reads and writes, and Cloud Storage holds objects, not queries.

  2. Question 2 · Modernise infrastructure and applications with Google Cloud

    A developer wants to deploy a containerised web service that scales to zero when idle and needs no cluster management. Which service should they choose?

    1. Compute Engine
    2. Google Kubernetes Engine
    3. Cloud Run
    4. Cloud Storage

    Answer: C. Cloud Run runs containers serverlessly, scaling to zero, with no cluster to manage. GKE offers Kubernetes with more control and more responsibility; Compute Engine is virtual machines.

  3. Question 3 · Trust and security with Google Cloud

    Which principle describes granting each user only the permissions needed for their job?

    1. Defence in depth
    2. Least privilege
    3. Shared fate
    4. Data residency

    Answer: B. Least privilege limits each identity to the minimum access required. Defence in depth layers controls, shared fate describes the vendor-customer partnership on security, and data residency concerns where data is stored.

Questions people ask before they book

Who should take the Cloud Digital Leader?
Anyone who works with Google Cloud decisions without building on it, and technical people who want the map before the Associate Cloud Engineer.
Is it hard?
It is foundational but wide, with six near-equal domains. Twenty to thirty hours of study is typical for a first attempt.
Is there a published pass mark?
No; Google reports pass or fail. Aim for 80% on practice papers.
How long is it valid?
Three years from the date you pass. Google emails holders before expiry, and recertifying means sitting the current version of the same exam.
Digital Leader or Associate Cloud Engineer?
Digital Leader if your role is business or leadership; Associate Cloud Engineer if you will deploy and operate on Google Cloud. The Engineer exam is hands-on and considerably harder.