Deformations of Galois representations and exceptional monodromy

For any simple algebraic group $G$ of exceptional type, we construct geometric $\ell$-adic Galois representations with algebraic monodromy group equal to $G$, in particular producing the first such examples in types $\mathrm{F}_4$ and $\mathrm{E}_6$. To do this, we extend to general reductive groups Ravi Ramakrishna's techniques for lifting odd two-dimensional Galois representations to geometric $\ell$-adic representations.