Hi, Im Silver, I got my Architect, Network and Security Certs this year.

[SilverMx]

Hi Everyone,

I just found this community today, I had been working on my Cloud knowledge, and so far I got 3 certs

• GCP Professional Cloud Architect
• GCP Professional Network Engineer
• GCP Professional Security Engineer

I enjoyed the process and I'm still learning, I come from a software development background and recently I was working in DevOps for the last 4 years, and I like to continue learning. It has been always my intention to get a Cloud Architect Role, but I just wondering about the next steps.

What would you recommend to prepare for a Cloud Architect Role? All the advice is really appreciated.
Kind regards.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/silver-nunez/

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

Welcome Silver! 👋 You can probably get some great practical advice from folks like @glen_yu, @kumards  and  @omkarsuram_ here. 

Some resources that might help supplement your learning path are reading & watching Google Cloud's Architecture Framework, as well as diving deeper into the practice of FinOps.  

[omkarsuram_ · Accepted solution]

Thank you Andrew!  😄 Curious to see what you think about my insight. 

[these are my personal opinions]

Cloud Architect role is very broad, I would emphasis to keep getting skilled on various tools and automations out there. As an architect you need to evaluate how do you enable customer/someone make an informed decision. 
eg: 99.999 reliability of creating a service a will cost you $XM but architecting it for 99% reliability would be $0.XM. you can do this for what Andrew mention for each pillar for architecture framework. rough frame. of thought. 

• What are the requirements 
• Whats are available options (cost of each)
• Does this increase Operating cost + burden?
• What are the risks of choosing options
• Short term recommendation vs long term etc etc.. 

The best place to get deep into solving problems would be to get into an cloud architect roles @ Google Sales org, PSO, or even work at our partner organizations who work with customers day in and out. 

Skills(Cert, tech, etc) are like your tools, you have them handy and ready to go. 
you will use few of them when you go work with a customer to help them solve a problem. 

My advice going into this field would be to focus on learning, skilling up, listening to customer problems, Prioritize them, question the value and work on things that will have an impact. Few of those will lead you to road you never imagined existed for you. 

PS: Secret to find your Cloud Arch role 😉 --> here is a curated list of partners that use google cloud. just reach out and connect with people who work there.  
https://cloud.google.com/find-a-partner/

hope this helps 🙂

[glen_yu · Accepted solution]

I guess I'll chime in here as well.  First of all: congrats on your certs.  I'll restate what the others here have said already.  The Cloud Architect role is very broad in scope, and IMHO, Network Engineer, Security Engineer and Cloud Developer are all areas/certs that supplement the knowledge required to operate effectively in the Cloud Architect role. 

I would say to learning to utilize the other aspects of GCP's offerings to build cohesive solutions.  Kubernetes is not the solution to everything.  Learning to utilize Cloud Functions or Cloud Run, etc. when appropriate is important.  Look up secure landing zones (SLZs) Terraform blueprints, etc. and see how/what components are included in those.  A lot of the architecting experience comes from testing, seeing what others do, replicating and iterating as it applies to your use case.  

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

Welcome Silver! 👋 You can probably get some great practical advice from folks like @glen_yu, @kumards  and  @omkarsuram_ here. 

Some resources that might help supplement your learning path are reading & watching Google Cloud's Architecture Framework, as well as diving deeper into the practice of FinOps.  

[kumards]

Congrats on completing your certifications @SilverMx !

Thank you @AndrewB ! I'm learning so much through our community and am happy to contribute where I can. 😊

[SilverMx]

Hi @kumards,
Thank you, I wasnt sure I will be able to pass the exams, but well it is done jejeje.
I am preparing for the next step and I wonder what can I do to be ready for a Cloud Architect Interview based on your recommendations.

[SilverMx]

Ty @AndrewB , I will have a look a the documents.

I was already checking the best practices from the architect website
https://cloud.google.com/architecture

Hybrid and multi-cloud patterns and practices

Hybrid and multi-cloud architecture patterns

Hybrid and multi-cloud network topologies

Quick question, is there is a difference between the cloud.google.com/architecture and googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Architecture-Framework-Community/bg-p/cloud-architecture-framework-blog

I'm also completing the Architect, Network, and Security Paths at Cloudskillsboost. Google

[AndrewB]

Think of the blog as an extension of the official documents on cloud.google.com/architecture

[omkarsuram_ · Accepted solution]

Thank you Andrew!  😄 Curious to see what you think about my insight. 

[these are my personal opinions]

Cloud Architect role is very broad, I would emphasis to keep getting skilled on various tools and automations out there. As an architect you need to evaluate how do you enable customer/someone make an informed decision. 
eg: 99.999 reliability of creating a service a will cost you $XM but architecting it for 99% reliability would be $0.XM. you can do this for what Andrew mention for each pillar for architecture framework. rough frame. of thought. 

• What are the requirements 
• Whats are available options (cost of each)
• Does this increase Operating cost + burden?
• What are the risks of choosing options
• Short term recommendation vs long term etc etc.. 

The best place to get deep into solving problems would be to get into an cloud architect roles @ Google Sales org, PSO, or even work at our partner organizations who work with customers day in and out. 

Skills(Cert, tech, etc) are like your tools, you have them handy and ready to go. 
you will use few of them when you go work with a customer to help them solve a problem. 

My advice going into this field would be to focus on learning, skilling up, listening to customer problems, Prioritize them, question the value and work on things that will have an impact. Few of those will lead you to road you never imagined existed for you. 

PS: Secret to find your Cloud Arch role 😉 --> here is a curated list of partners that use google cloud. just reach out and connect with people who work there.  
https://cloud.google.com/find-a-partner/

hope this helps 🙂

[SilverMx]

Thank you for the info.

I just wondering if a Professional Services Organization (PSO) is done by a Customer Engineer at Google. if that is right, I can check the job application to see what is required.

I was a little bit confused because I think the Customer Engineer is a role related to sales and tech, but if you are an Architect on the partner side will it be more related to the implementation of the Architecture?
It looks like they are different Roles depending on what side are you on.

[glen_yu · Accepted solution]

I guess I'll chime in here as well.  First of all: congrats on your certs.  I'll restate what the others here have said already.  The Cloud Architect role is very broad in scope, and IMHO, Network Engineer, Security Engineer and Cloud Developer are all areas/certs that supplement the knowledge required to operate effectively in the Cloud Architect role. 

I would say to learning to utilize the other aspects of GCP's offerings to build cohesive solutions.  Kubernetes is not the solution to everything.  Learning to utilize Cloud Functions or Cloud Run, etc. when appropriate is important.  Look up secure landing zones (SLZs) Terraform blueprints, etc. and see how/what components are included in those.  A lot of the architecting experience comes from testing, seeing what others do, replicating and iterating as it applies to your use case.  

[SilverMx]

Thank you for your answer @glen_yu, I appreciate it because it is really difficult to get some advice. I think the community has opened a new door for me.
I think you are right, I was planning to review the best practices documentation and also the use case from some companies, to understand their implementation.
Do you have any sources you recommend?

[glen_yu · Accepted solution]

I think if you do a search for SLZ and GCP, you'll find some materials.  I'm Canadian and a (minimum) SLZ for a typical Canadian government would be classified as PBMM (Protected B, Medium Integrity, Medium Availability), where Protected B is a Canadian designation for various levels of confidentiality/privacy.  GCP's GitHub has a repo for this here.  I would say to look through it (assuming you know Terraform -- if not, I recommend you learn it or the basics of IaC at the very least), but aside from a lot of naming standards, you'll see storage buckets and retention policies, etc. and other components required to meet the needs of PBMM. 

Again, this is more relevant to me as I'm Canadian and I deal with this kind of stuff, but I'm sure Europe would have its own SLZ blueprints geared towards GDPR, etc. 

EDIT: and while governments are usually more stringent about their needs, companies/enterprises typically require something similar, and while they may not call it an SLZ, it all amounts to pretty much the same thing.  They want a secure foundational setup upon which they can build and expand their cloud infrastructure with good, centralized control (org policies) and management (i.e. Shared-VPCs) to simplify/reduce operational overhead.

[SilverMx]

Ty @glen_yu, I will have a look for sure, I worked with Terraform but for basic things, I think I should invest more time on it.

[Roderick]

Love this! Please keep us post where you end up! 

---

@SilverMx wrote:

I think the community has opened a new door for me.

---