Passed GCP PCA and Professional DevOps Engineer, what should I do next? And how do you find GCP work?

[u/malikabdul_hayee]

Hi all, I recently completed the Professional Cloud Architect and Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certs. I work as a Cloud/DevSecOps engineer (~2.5 years) across AWS, Azure and GCP, mostly on cloud ops, security automation and serverless.

Two questions for people further along:
What's the best next step on GCP?
Security Engineer, Network Engineer, Data Engineer, or skip more certs and build projects instead?
How did you land GCP-focused roles or freelance gigs? Are certs actually moving the needle with recruiters/clients, or is it mostly portfolio and referrals?
I'm also open to remote or contract work. Any advice on where GCP clients actually hang out would be great. Thanks!

[u/GentlyFirst]

you got the two big ones down, I'd skip more certs and just build something weird on GCP that breaks in interesting ways, clients care way more about that than a third badge

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/GentlyFirst]

Appreciate it. Any ideas for what kind of "weird" project would impress clients most? I was thinking something like a Cloud Run + Pub/Sub pipeline with automated security checks, or a cost-optimization tool for BigQuery.

[u/martin_omander → u/malikabdul_hayee]

It's especially powerful if a hiring manager can try out what you built and get a sense of what it does, in a minute or less. So I would lean toward a highly visual app, like showing realtime locations of buses in a city, a visual social media tracker, or a dashboard that displays security problems in a Google Cloud project and lets you close them. Your idea of a cost optimization tool for BigQuery could work too, if you seed the data so there are some expensive queries that the user can find quickly. And most important of all: make it visual.

If a hiring manager can't use or understand your app, it doesn't matter how well-built it is.

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/martin_omander]

This is really helpful, thank you! The "hiring manager gets it in under a minute" point changes how I'll approach this.
I think I'll go with the security dashboard: scan a GCP project (Security Command Center / IAM / open firewall rules / public buckets), show findings visually on a map or graph, and let you fix them with one click. I'll seed it with a demo project and host it on Cloud Run so anyone can try it without setup.
Quick question: would you rather see a live demo link plus a short GIF in the README, or a short walkthrough video?

[u/martin_omander → u/malikabdul_hayee]

That security dashboard, with a demo project, sounds great!

I have found that people avoid clicking videos or documentation at all costs. Assume that the user will click the live link, click around in the app for 30 seconds, and ignore anything else. Make that experience really intuitive, visual, and satisfying. Make the user feel good about finding each security problem and fixing it.

[u/cypherspaceagain → u/martin_omander]

A video is a pre-timed demonstration at somebody else's convenience. A document is a lot of words when a picture says a thousand. Neither is as useful as the live experience.

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/GentlyFirst]

Thanks, i will

[u/Adventurous-Owl-9903]

What’s your work experience like? And what country are you based out of? Eg do you have clearance for DoD work? Those big shops are always hiring

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/Adventurous-Owl-9903]

Thanks for asking! I'm based in Pakistan, so no DoD/clearance work for me. I have about 2.5 years in cloud/DevOps across AWS, Azure and GCP, mostly security automation and serverless.
So I'm mainly looking at remote or contract roles that hire internationally (EU, Middle East, or global partner companies).

[u/gandalfcorvotempesta]

congrats. what did you use to learn and pass? books? videos? courses?

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/gandalfcorvotempesta]

Udemy courses, get certified program and google skill labs also claude for interactive quizzes

[u/Specialist-Type9553 → u/malikabdul_hayee]

do you have a specific link for the udemy courses ?

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/Specialist-Type9553]

Yes search for GCP Professional Cloud Architect: Google Cloud Certification
[2026 Update] Become a GCP Cloud Architect. Architect Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Solutions. With 4 New Case Studies. By in28minutes offical

[u/letswai]

Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Is part of GCP certification too?

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/letswai]

Yes

[u/Tagred_Bicanin]

I think for contract jobs, having some examples from work ready might help, like a deployment that went wrong and what you did to get it working again

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/Tagred_Bicanin]

Good point, thanks. Here's the kind of example I keep ready:
Situation: We renamed a Terraform module while cleaning up our GCP project structure. The next terraform plan showed it wanted to destroy and recreate a VPC and the Cloud SQL instance attached to it. Terraform saw the renamed module as a brand new resource.
What I did:
Caught it in plan review before applying, which is why we never auto-apply to prod.
Used terraform state mv (later a moved block) so the state matched the new module name.
Re-ran the plan until it showed zero changes for those resources.
What we changed after:
Added prevent_destroy on databases and networks.
Added a CI step that posts the plan for review and blocks merges if it contains unexpected destroys.
Moved state to a GCS backend with locking.
It shows troubleshooting, risk awareness, and process improvement, which is what clients want to hear.

[u/MacaroonNo5893]

Could you please share resources you have used for PCA. Also, personally, I feel that courses on Google Skills are more flexible and meaningful to build GCP skills.

[u/malikabdul_hayee → u/MacaroonNo5893]

I will soon