Google Cloud Platform Service Account is Unable to Access Project

I encounter the following warning:

WARNING: You do not appear to have access to project [$PROJECT] or it does not exist.

after running the following commands locally:

1. Activate and set a service account:

   gcloud auth activate-service-account \
   $SERVICE_ACCOUNT \
   --key-file=key.json
   
   #=>
   
   Activated service account credentials for: [$SERVICE_ACCOUNT]
   

2. Select $PROJECT as the above service account:

   gcloud config set project $PROJECT
   
   #=>
   
   Updated property [core/project].
   WARNING: You do not appear to have access to project [$PROJECT] or it does not exist.
   

My own GCP account is associated with the following roles:

• App Engine Admin
• Cloud Build Editor
• Cloud Scheduler Admin
• Storage Object Creator
• Storage Object Viewer

Why is this service account unable to set $PROJECT? Is there a role or permission I am missing?

I believe this is an erroneous warning message. I see the same warning message on my service account despite the fact that the account has permissions on my GCP project and can successfully perform necessary actions.

You might be seeing this error due to an unrelated problem. In my case, I was trying to deploy to AppEngine from a continuous integration environment (Circle CI), but I hadn't enabled the App Engine Admin API. Once I enabled the API, I was able to deploy successfully.