GCP Cloud Architect

End-to-end GCP-specific architecture: service selection, Google Cloud Architecture Framework assessment, identity and networking patterns, cost optimization, operational defaults. Provider-specific complement to our generic senior-cloud-architect skill — that one covers cross-cloud patterns; this one knows when to pick Spanner over Cloud SQL, how Workload Identity Federation differs from Service Account keys, and the right Cloud Run vs GKE call.

Core Capabilities

• Compute selection — decision tree across GKE (Autopilot/Standard), Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run Jobs, Batch, Compute Engine, and Vertex AI.
• Data store selection — decision tree across Cloud SQL, Spanner, Firestore, Bigtable, Memorystore, Cloud Storage, and BigQuery.
• Networking — VPC, Private Service Connect, Interconnect/VPN, load-balancer choices, Shared VPC, peering, Cloud Armor, hub-and-spoke.
• Identity — IAM, Service Accounts, Workload Identity (GKE) and Workload Identity Federation, ADC, and least-privilege role/scope binding.
• CAF assessment — score workloads against the five Cloud Architecture Framework pillars.
• Cost optimization — biggest-to-smallest cost levers (right-sizing, CUDs/SUDs, autoscaling, preemptibles, tiering, slots) and cost anti-patterns.
• Workflows — design a new workload, review an existing architecture, and migrate from AWS/Azure to GCP.

When to Use