Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Practice Tests 2026

Updated October 2026: six new practice exams, 300 questions, written for the current exam guide.

These practice exams are written by Dan Sullivan, author of the Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Study Guide (Wiley). I rewrote every question in October 2026 to match the current Professional Data Engineer exam guide, including the newer services and the product names Google uses today.

What's new in the October 2026 update

• Six full-length exams, 50 questions each, 300 questions in total (up from 100)
• Every question was written for the current exam guide's five sections, in the same proportions as the real exam:
  • Designing data processing systems (about 22%)
  • Ingesting and processing the data (about 25%)
  • Storing the data (about 20%)
  • Preparing and using data for analysis (about 15%)
  • Maintaining and automating data workloads (about 18%)
• Coverage of newer exam topics, such as BigQuery AI functions and continuous queries, embeddings and RAG data preparation, Apache Iceberg managed tables and BigLake, Knowledge Catalog, BigQuery sharing, Dataform, Datastream, Managed Service for Apache Kafka, Pub/Sub single message transforms, BigQuery editions and reservations, and Bigtable Data Boost
• Current product names throughout, with the former name noted where it changed, for example Managed Service for Apache Spark (formerly Dataproc), Managed Service for Apache Airflow (formerly Cloud Composer), Knowledge Catalog (formerly Dataplex Universal Catalog), and Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio)

Explanations that teach, not just grade

Most practice tests tell you which answer is right. These explain why. Every answer option has its own explanation of why it's correct or incorrect for that scenario, and often when it would be the right choice. Every question also has a detailed overall explanation that covers the concept behind the question, why each distractor fails, an exam tip on the pattern to recognize, and links to the relevant Google Cloud documentation. If you get a question wrong, the explanation should leave you understanding the topic, not just the answer.

Questions like the ones you'll see on the exam

The questions are realistic scenarios with the constraints that decide the answer: minimize cost, minimize operational overhead, meet a recovery objective, keep data in a region, follow least privilege. Some questions test exact BigQuery SQL, bq, and gcloud usage. About one in six is multiple select, as on the real exam. Each question was checked against current Google Cloud documentation and reviewed independently.

How to use these exams

Take the first exam before you study to find your gaps, then use the explanations and documentation links to fill them. Save the later exams to check your readiness. The real exam is two hours long with 40 to 50 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions; each practice exam gives you 120 minutes for 50 questions so you can practice your pacing. Aim to score well above 70% before you book the exam.

This course is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. Google Cloud is a trademark of Google LLC.