Google Cloud opens the curriculum it trains its own FDEs on as a public Professional Agentic Architect certification

Google Cloud has opened its Professional Agentic Architect certification to all developers, cloud architects and engineers. It is the newest part of the company's Gemini Agent Ready (GEAR) program. Google says the curriculum started as internal training, and over the past four months it has been used to train thousands of Google Cloud forward deployed engineers and strategic partners. The announcement on the Google Cloud blog is co-signed by the VP who runs Google Cloud's forward deployed engineers.

The exam has two parts. A multiple-choice test delivered by Pearson covers system design, architecture standards, cost and security governance. Hands-on labs on Google Skills then ask candidates to build, test and debug working agent workflows in a live cloud environment. Candidates must pass both. The five domains are low-code agents, coding agents for app development, custom agents on the Gemini platform with open-source frameworks, evaluating and deploying agent workflows, and securing and governing them.

Why it matters for FDEs: this is a direct look at the skills Google expects from its own forward deployed engineers. Google says it uses the same standard for its engineers, its partners and its customers. That gives engineers who want to move into FDE work on Google Cloud, or into one of the partner FDE practices Google is now funding, a public way to show those skills.