In April, I joined the Google Cloud Early Adopter program to complete training and sit Google Cloud’s newest exam: Google Cloud Generative AI Leader (beta). This is Google’s second foundational level certification, following Google Cloud Digital Leader, but this time focusing on GenAI. In this blog I share my experience including recommended training courses, exam tips, thoughts and general guidance to help others planning to take this exam.

A Note on My Beta Exam Experience

As I participated in the early adopter program, I sat the beta version of the Generative AI Leader exam in April. It’s worth noting a few differences from the now Generally Available (GA) exam:

  • Beta Exam Length: The beta consisted of 64 questions with a 2.5-hour time limit.
  • My Completion Time: I was able to complete it in approximately 45 minutes.
  • Question Nature: The questions, while comprehensive, were not overly long or complex, aligning with its foundational nature. The official practice exam questions were a good reflection of what I encountered.

The GA exam, as detailed later in this post, has a 90-minute duration for 50-60 questions. While specifics can change between beta and GA, the core focus on foundational GenAI concepts remains.

What is the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader certification?

Google Cloud’s Foundational Generative AI Leader certification is Google Cloud’s second foundational level certification, alongside Google Cloud Digital Leader. As per Google’s definition:

“A Generative AI Leader is a visionary professional with comprehensive knowledge of how generative AI (gen AI) can transform businesses. They have business-level knowledge of Google Cloud’s gen AI offerings and understand how Google’s AI-first approach can lead organisations toward innovative and responsible AI adoption. They influence gen AI-powered initiatives and identify opportunities across business functions and industries, using Google Cloud’s enterprise-ready offerings to accelerate innovation.

This certification is for anyone in any job role, with or without hands-on technical experience.”

Google Cloud Generative AI Leader Certification Badge

Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader Certification Badge

Who is the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader certification aimed at?

In short, everyone within an organisation that is looking to embrace Generative AI would benefit from the associated training materials and certification. The certification is aimed at validating broad knowledge of Generative AI concepts, products, services and tools available on Google Cloud. There are no technical prerequisites for the course and as part of a corporate training program, it sets a strong foundation across the workforce, highlighting the value Generative AI can bring to an organisation and ultimately helping increase GenAI adoption.

How difficult is the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader certification?

Google Cloud has 3 levels of certifications starting at the entry level with Foundational certifications (Cloud Digital Leader and Generative AI Leader), Associate certifications (Cloud Engineer, Workspace Administrator, and Data Practitioner) and a range of Professional level specialist certifications (Cloud Architect, Database Engineer, Data Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Developer, Security Engineer, Network Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer).

Given the exam is a foundational certification, it isn’t as challenging as Associate and Professional certifications. However, it does cover a broad scope of Generative AI practices, so if you have very little experience working with Generative AI or Google Cloud, you may struggle without completing suitable training (see below). If you’re working at a technical level with Generative AI and familiar with Google Cloud’s products including Vertex AI, Agentspace, NotebookLM, Google AI Studio, Google’s Gemini/Gemma/Imagen/Veo models etc., Google Cloud’s various data related products, and more broader industry terminology, you should find the exam less challenging. However, even for those fairly new to Google Cloud, there are various materials available that can bring you up to speed as covered below.

How to prepare for and pass the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader exam

Generative AI Leader Exam Guide

The best way to prepare for any Google Cloud exam is to review the exam guide:. If you are running through all the topics covered on the exam guide, and have a good understanding of each, then you may not need to do too much study. With the exam being foundational, you don’t need to understand the technical complexities of some exam topics, or how to implement them, you simply need to understand what they are, when they should be used, when they shouldn’t be used, and what Google Cloud products would be most appropriate. After reviewing the exam guide, you can baseline yourself against it and tailor your training requirements accordingly.

The Generative AI Leader exam guide breaks down exam content into four main areas, providing a weighted percentage for each. These areas are:

  • Fundamentals of generative AI (~30% of the exam)
  • Google Cloud’s generative AI offerings (~35% of the exam)
  • Techniques to improve AI model output (~20% of the exam)
  • Business strategies for a successful gen AI solution (~15% of the exam)

Reflecting on my beta exam experience, while the official exam guide is your definitive source, key areas and concepts that were prominently featured included:

  • Core GenAI Terminology: A solid understanding of terms like hallucinations, model bias, overfitting, supervised learning vs. unsupervised learning, explainable AI, and familiarity with frameworks like Google’s SAIF (Secure AI Framework).
  • Google Cloud Product & Service Familiarity:
    • Vertex AI: Its capabilities and how it supports the MLOps lifecycle.
    • Fundamental Concepts: What constitutes infrastructure and its purpose, the role of a platform, and the definition and function of an AI agent.
    • Google’s Models: Awareness of the Gemini family and Gemma models.
    • AI Studio: Familiarity using Google AI Studio, Gems and/or Vertex AI Studio.
    • Data Solutions: Identifying suitable storage options for GenAI workloads and understanding streaming services like Pub/Sub and Dataflow in the context of real-time data for AI.
  • MLOps: Grasping what MLOps is and how Vertex AI facilitates these practices.
  • Strategic AI Implementation:
    • The critical importance of an organisation’s AI strategy and aligning GenAI initiatives accordingly.
    • The role of managers and business leaders in identifying opportunities to implement GenAI solutions and drive adoption.

While the GA exam might have variations, these topics underscore the foundational, business-oriented perspective the certification aims to validate. Remember, for a foundational exam, the focus is often on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ rather than deep technical ‘how-to’.

The official exam guide is rather thorough (5 pages!) and does a good job at covering the contents of the exam in addition to the above.

Recommended training material and courses for Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader certification including practice exam question sources.

Whilst the exam became GA today, 14th May 2025, there are already various materials available to help prepare including:

  • Google Cloud Skills Boost learning path: Generative AI Leader
  • Google Cloud Generative AI Leader Study Guide
  • Google Cloud Documentation
  • Google Cloud Solutions
  • Priyanka Vergadia aka The Cloud Girl

Google Cloud Skills Boost Learning Path: Generative AI Leader

Google Cloud Skills Boost Generative AI Leader Learning Path is an online self-paced training course. The content is presented in a series of five courses, over approximately 8 hours. The content for each is predominantly instructor led video material, with a few quizzes thrown in along the way to test your understanding of the concepts covered.

  • Module 01 Gen AI: Beyond the Chatbot: 1hr 30mins: This course aims to move beyond the basic understanding of chatbots to explore the true potential of generative AI for your organisation. You explore concepts like foundation models and prompt engineering, which are crucial for leveraging the power of gen AI. The course also guides you through important considerations you should make when developing a successful gen AI strategy for your organisation.
  • Module 02 Gen AI: Unlock Foundational Concepts: 1hr: In this course, you unlock the foundational concepts of generative AI by exploring the differences between AI, ML, and gen AI, and understanding how various data types enable generative AI to address business challenges. You also gain insights into Google Cloud strategies to address the limitations of foundation models and the key challenges for responsible and secure AI development and deployment.
  • Module 03 Gen AI: Navigate the Landscape: 1hr 15mins: Gen AI is changing how we work and interact with the world around us. But as a leader, how can you harness its power to drive real business outcomes? In this course, you explore the different layers of building gen AI solutions, Google Cloud’s offerings, and the factors to consider when selecting a solution.
  • Module 04 Gen AI Apps: Transform Your Work: 1hr 45mins: This course introduces Google’s gen AI applications, such as Gemini for Workspace and NotebookLM. It guides you through concepts like grounding, retrieval augmented generation, constructing effective prompts and building automated workflows.
  • Module 05 Gen AI Agents: Transform Your Organisation: 2hr 15mins: This course explores how organisations can use custom gen AI agents to help tackle specific business challenges. You gain hands-on practice building a basic gen AI agent, while exploring the components of these agents, such as models, reasoning loops, and tools.

Generative AI Leader Study Guide

Google Cloud have also issued a pdf study guide:- 11 pages covering core concepts to help develop your understanding for the exam.

Google Cloud Generative AI Leader Study Guide Fundamentals of Generative AI

Google Cloud Generative AI Leader Study Guide Fundamentals of Generative AI

Google Cloud Documentation

Google Cloud Solutions

Google Cloud Solutions provides a vast range of QuickStarts and tutorials to guide you through and provide hands on experience with Google Cloud’s products and services. These tutorials prove invaluable providing additional experience working with some of the services you may be less familiar with. You can simply filter by GenAI to relevant solutions, although these are more advanced and not essential for this certification.

Priyanka Vergadia aka The Cloud Girl

For those who benefit more from visual learning- Priyanka Vergadia aka The Cloud Girl has created an excellent collection of sketchnotes covering a wide range of Google Cloud products, services, and concepts in an easy to digest format. There are various Machine Learning and GenAI sketches that are easy to digest which will help build the foundational knowledge required for the certification, including familiarisation with the different Google Cloud products and services.

Priyanka also has various blogs again with graphical explanations for core concepts like Eliminating hallucinations with RAG and What is Agentic RAG vs Traditional RAG.

Why LLM's Hallucinate from Priyanka Vergadia

Example sketchnote from Priyanka Vergadia on LLM Hallucinations

Review the exam guide (yes, again!)

Once you have completed all the training materials, review the exam guide again. This time you should feel more confident in your level of knowledge for each topic. If there are still topics in the guide you don’t feel comfortable with, spend more time focussing on these, revisiting the content in the training courses, or researching the content in Google docs, and YouTube videos etc.

Take the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader practice exam

Once you are feeling confident you understand all the concepts covered in the exam guide, it’s time to do a practice test. Google provides a free practice test consisting of 15-20 questions to mimic the type of question you may see on the exam.

Complete the practice exam as a closed book exam- don’t allow yourself to search for answers, or review study material prior to answering. It’s key to see how well you are performing and highlight areas of weakness you may need to improve prior to booking the real exam.

At the end of the practice exam, review all the questions including those you have got right and read the feedback provided by Google for each answer. This feedback clarifies why a particular answer is correct, and why others are incorrect, further consolidating your understanding of the subject. For any answers you are still unclear about, or if you feel the feedback doesn’t help you to understand why a particular answer is correct, spend more time revisiting the associated topic on one of the available training platforms or YouTube videos.

Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader Exam Strategy and Tips

Perform the first iteration of the exam quickly, answering the questions you are confident you know the answer for. If you don’t know the answer to a question, mark it for review at the end and try to rule out any incorrect answers from those available. Typically, there are a couple of answers that may be correct, however a subtle word within the question usually makes one of the answers a better fit than the others.

Once you complete your first iteration, review your marked questions, and spend more time on them accordingly. By taking this approach, you can determine how long you can spend your remaining time on these tougher questions as you know how many you marked for review. You may also get lucky and find a later question on the exam helps you to identify the answer to a previous question you were unsure on either directly or indirectly by triggering a memory of some detail that earlier escaped you!

Upon completion of the exam, a provisional pass or fail is displayed on the screen. Look out for it, if it’s your first Google Cloud certification you can quite easily miss it as for whatever reason, it’s not highlighted particularly well! Google subsequently confirms the pass/failure within 7-10 days’ time (although it’s often sooner!).

How to book the Google Cloud Foundational Generative AI Leader exam

Google Cloud has introduced a single sign on solution for exam booking now. Whilst exams are booked via Kryterion Webassessor, you need to register for a CertMetrics: account first. Once registered and logged in, there is an option to schedule/launch an exam, which grants access to your WebAssessor account. The exam can be taken in a test centre, or via a remote proctored exam monitored via a web camera and microphone.

Kryterion logo

Kryterion Test Centres Logo

Since covid I have been taking advantage of the remote proctored exams for convenience. The nearest test centre to me was around 1 hour away. There are a various system requirements for online proctoring. This includes installing a secure browser application, and disabling various components that may interfere with the remote proctoring such as firewalls, anti-virus, pop up blockers etc. For this reason, Kryterion recommends you use a personal device for the exam. There is a system checker available to test internet speed, microphone, and webcam functionality here.

Kryterion requires you to enrol in biometrics and create a biometrics profile which is used to identify yourself digitally based on facial characteristics. Each time you launch an exam, a biometric check is performed to validate you match your biometric profile. You can launch the remote proctored exam 10 minutes before your scheduled exam time. However, during busy times you may find you are waiting around for up to 30 minutes for a proctor to join and ‘secure the testing environment.’ This consists of displaying your government issued ID to the proctor and then providing a 360-degree view of the room, and your clear desk to the proctor.

Once they are happy the room is secure, your exam is started. The proctor monitors you via the webcam and microphone and will pause the exam if there are any issues and contact you via the secure browser chat functionality. This has happened to me once when the proctor advised my video stream had stopped working mid-exam. The exam was paused whilst my laptop restarted, and the proctor verified the stream was working again.

On a second occasion, the proctor advised my video stream wasn’t working before the exam had started- a reboot failed to resolve the issue, and I was advised to contact Kryterion support. This wasn’t the greatest start to the exam, as I was now past my scheduled start time, however support was able to reschedule the exam to begin as soon as I had finished troubleshooting the issue with them, or I could book it for another day if it was no longer convenient.

It is best to book your exam ahead of time, as this gives you a date to work towards completing study and revision and helps ensure you get to choose a date/time that suits you best. If you leave booking the exam until after you finish your studying, you may find there aren’t as many convenient times available as you would like. If you find yourself in this position, check back regularly as I’ve seen a lot of times that were not available when checking the previous day, become available a day or two later. Provided you give at least 24 hours’ notice, you are free to reschedule your exam to another time if for any reason you are not ready.

How long is the Google Cloud Generative AI Leader exam?

The Google Cloud Generative AI Leader exam is a 90-minute exam during which you will need to answer 50-60 multiple choice questions.

How long is the Google Cloud Generative AI Leader certification valid?

All Google Cloud Foundational certifications including Generative AI Leader are valid for 3 years. You can recertify 180 days prior to certification expiration.

How much does the Google Cloud Generative AI Leader exam cost?

The Google Cloud Generative AI Leader exam costs $99 USD.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog, I hope you find it useful in preparing for the Google Cloud Generative AI Leader certification. Please feel free to share, subscribe to be alerted to future posts, follow me on LinkedIn, and react/comment below!

If you’re new to Google Cloud certifications, or you’re deciding what certification to do next, check out my other blog posts covering: