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Senior Cloud FinOps engineer

AHEAD· MS Cloud / Managed Services
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Remote$160k - $175kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Senior Cloud FinOps Engineer leading complex cloud financial management, optimization, and governance across AWS, Azure, and GCP for multiple managed services clients. Combines cloud engineering, financial analysis, and client advisory to improve visibility, forecasting, unit economics, and cost efficiency.

Responsibilities

  • Lead detailed analysis of cloud spend, usage trends, allocation accuracy, anomalies, and optimization opportunities across AWS, Azure, and GCP using native tooling and approved third-party FinOps platforms.
  • Identify, quantify, prioritize, and drive optimization opportunities including rightsizing, idle resource cleanup, storage and data transfer optimization, licensing alignment, and scheduling strategies.
  • Track optimization opportunities through identified, recommended, approved, implemented, and realized states, validating financial outcomes and avoiding double-counting or attribution of unrealized savings.
  • Lead cost visibility and allocation for containerized and Kubernetes workloads, including shared cluster cost distribution, namespace and label-based allocation, and idle capacity analysis.
  • Analyze and optimize AI and GPU-related spend, including accelerated compute utilization, model training and inference costs, and consumption of managed AI and machine learning services.
  • Extend cost analysis to SaaS, software licensing, and marketplace spend where these fall within the agreed scope of the engagement.
  • Conduct best-practices reviews that combine cost analysis with operational excellence analysis, using cloud-native and approved AHEAD tooling.
  • Lead complex cost allocation and tagging efforts, including governance standards, mapping logic, reporting accuracy, inherited tag strategies, and treatment of non-taggable resources.
  • Define and maintain unit economics and cost-per-unit metrics that tie cloud spend to business drivers such as customers, transactions, environments, products, or workloads.
  • Own or lead creation of dashboards, reports, budgets, forecasts, showback and chargeback views, executive summaries, and recurring service review content.
  • Lead data validation and reconciliation across billing exports, connectors, cost datasets, and reporting models to improve trust in reported values, including work toward standardized billing data formats such as FOCUS.
  • Implement and maintain continuous tagging governance through cloud-native policy enforcement and automated remediation scripting, refining coverage as untagged or non-compliant resources are identified.
  • Maintain client-facing FinOps tooling and portals, ensuring predictive analytics, multi-account views, and resource, configuration, and environment change reporting remain current and accurate.
  • Manage commitment portfolios across clients, including reserved capacity and savings plan modeling, purchase recommendations, coverage and utilization targets, expiration and renewal planning, and savings realization tracking.
  • Support enterprise agreement, private pricing, and committed-spend discussions by providing consumption analysis, commitment scenarios, and drawdown forecasts to client and AHEAD stakeholders.
  • Develop and present financially grounded recommendations that translate technical findings into business value for engineering, finance, procurement, and executive stakeholders.
  • Communicate with external customers, including senior management, on matters requiring explanation, interpretation, and advisory judgment, and help client leadership set strategic direction beyond individual tactics.
  • Translate customer business requirements into technical and financial requirements, and write or lead complex deliverables within the practice.
  • Partner with CloudOps, DevOps, platform, application, finance, procurement, and client stakeholders to support implementation of recommendations and validate realized outcomes.
  • Maintain timely ticket updates, work documentation, meeting follow-ups, and internal and customer communications in accordance with service delivery expectations.
  • Facilitate recurring client advisory calls that cover cost and billing changes, identify additional systems or workloads the client may want to migrate to the cloud, and gather client feedback on AHEAD\'s service delivery performance.
  • Build and maintain queries, data transformations, and automation using SQL and at least one scripting language such as Python or PowerShell, in order to reduce manual effort, improve repeatability, and increase delivery quality and scale.
  • Integrate third-party tools, billing data sources, and reporting platforms into approved FinOps tooling and governance structures, including onboarding of new clients, accounts, subscriptions, and projects.
  • Provide credible time and effort estimates based on available information, and prioritize and complete work independently within committed timelines while meeting established quality standards.
  • Provide technical leadership and coordinate technical delivery resources across skillsets when required, including cross-practice work and deliverables, without direct personnel-management responsibility.
  • Initiate and participate in authoring project change requests when additional work is identified beyond agreed scope.
  • Execute approved remediation activities, including workload resizing, workload deletion, and commitment implementation, through client ticketing or service-request workflows, using client-granted permissions and following client change-control procedures.
  • Monitor delivery hours against contracted monthly allocations, flagging utilization trends and coordinating any approved overage or rescoping through the change-request process.
  • Mentor Cloud FinOps Engineers and other team members by reviewing work, sharing methods, improving documentation, and elevating team capability and consistency.
  • Contribute to internal standards, reusable assets, playbooks, work instructions, and continuous improvement initiatives across the FinOps practice, and provide measurable input into AHEAD products, processes, standards, and plans.
  • Influence direct team members, the broader internal team, and external customers to adopt new concepts, best practices, and approaches.
  • Serve as a reliable resource for thought leadership content, workshops, industry conferences, and webinars representing the practice.
  • Support pre-sales, solutioning, scoping, positioning, and service maturation efforts by providing subject matter expertise, effort input, and delivery perspective, and identify and escalate new client opportunities.
  • Deliver FinOps and tooling education and training for client teams to build internal cost-management capability, in addition to mentoring within the AHEAD practice.
  • Maintain availability during the assigned team\'s standard business hours, with reasonable flexibility to accommodate recurring client meetings and service reviews across United States time zones.
  • Participate in the team\'s on-call or escalation rotation where applicable to the assigned account portfolio.
  • Stay current on cloud pricing models, FinOps best practices, and service capabilities while helping refine how AHEAD delivers cloud cost optimization and advisory services.
  • Provide occasional after-hours support for client meetings, reporting deadlines, change windows, critical incidents, or urgent cost-related issues when required.
  • Maintain relevant professional and cloud certifications consistent with role, practice, and individual development requirements, and meet or exceed individual goal objectives.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, finance, business, or related field, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years in cloud engineering, cloud operations, infrastructure, or cloud cost management, including at least 3 years in cloud financial management, cost optimization, or FinOps.
  • 3+ years in a customer-facing or consulting role presenting findings to technical and business audiences.
  • Hands-on experience designing, deploying, or operating large-scale, multi-account cloud environments.
  • Subject matter expertise in at least one public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP); strong Azure or AWS preferred; GCP a plus.
  • Working proficiency in SQL and at least one scripting language (Python or PowerShell).
  • Experience using cloud cost management, billing analysis, or reporting platforms.
  • Experience integrating third-party tools, billing data sources, and reporting platforms.
  • Strong analytical, spreadsheet, and problem-solving skills.
  • Must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Skills

Required:Cloud cost managementSQLPython or PowerShell

Benefits

  • Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
  • 401(k)
  • Paid company holidays
  • Paid time off
  • Paid parental and caregiver leave
  • Plus more (benefits details at https://www.aheadbenefits.com/)
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About AHEAD

Digital Platforms Engineered for Modern Enterprises

AHEAD accelerates the impact of technology on clients by engineering customized data, developer, and infrastructure platforms that improve IT operations.

Platform SolutionsInfrastructure ModernizationLifecycle ManagementSeamless Integration
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