Senior FinOps Program Lead

Role: Senior FinOps Program Lead/Manager
location: Remote
Duration: 12+ Months contract

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced FinOps Lead / Manager to lead enterprise cloud financial management and cost optimization initiatives across multi-cloud environments. This role will work closely with engineering, finance, technology leadership, and business stakeholders to improve cloud cost visibility, establish FinOps governance, identify optimization opportunities, and deliver measurable financial outcomes.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in FinOps, cloud cost optimization, program management, stakeholder engagement, reporting, and automation, with exposure to AI-driven FinOps capabilities being highly desirable.

Key Responsibilities

FinOps Leadership & Strategy

• Lead FinOps initiatives across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.
• Develop and execute FinOps roadmaps covering cost visibility, optimization, governance, and maturity.
• Establish governance processes for tagging, cost allocation, showback/chargeback, budgets, and policy enforcement.
• Define and track FinOps KPIs including RI/Savings Plan coverage, utilization, effective savings rate, unit cost, and forecast accuracy.
• Conduct regular cloud cost reviews and optimization planning sessions.
• Prepare executive-level reports on cloud spending, savings, trends, risks, and ROI.

Stakeholder & Client Management

• Serve as a key point of contact for client leadership and senior stakeholders.
• Partner with engineering, finance, procurement, cloud operations, and business teams.
• Translate complex cloud financial information into clear business insights and recommendations.
• Present cost optimization opportunities, program updates, savings, and ROI to senior leadership.
• Coordinate with globally distributed teams to ensure successful delivery of FinOps initiatives.

Cloud Cost Optimization

• Identify and prioritize high-value cloud cost optimization opportunities.

• Drive initiatives including:

• Rightsizing and resource optimization

• Reserved Instances and Savings Plans

• Idle resource cleanup

• Workload scheduling

• Storage optimization

• Data transfer optimization

• Budget controls

• Cost anomaly detection

• Partner with engineering teams to implement recommendations and track realized savings.

• Measure and validate cost savings, cost avoidance, utilization improvements, and ROI.

FinOps Tools & Reporting

• Work with platforms such as IBM Cloudability, CloudHealth, AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and GCP Billing.
• Analyze cloud billing and usage data to identify trends and optimization opportunities.
• Oversee development of Power BI, Tableau, or equivalent dashboards.
• Provide business-unit, application, product, and cost-center level cost visibility.
• Improve cloud financial forecasting, reporting, and accountability.

Automation & Engineering Collaboration

• Collaborate with engineering teams to automate FinOps processes.
• Support Python-based automation, cloud APIs, SQL, scripts, and data pipelines.
• Automate cost analysis, anomaly detection, reporting, resource discovery, and optimization workflows.
• Identify opportunities to improve FinOps scalability and reduce manual processes.

AI-Enabled FinOps

• Drive adoption of AI and LLM-based capabilities within FinOps workflows.
• Support conversational interfaces and chatbots for cloud cost queries.
• Collaborate with AI/ML teams on agentic workflows and RAG-based solutions for FinOps use cases.
• Explore AI-driven anomaly detection, recommendations, forecasting, and self-service reporting.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies that can improve cloud financial management and decision-making.

Required Qualifications

• 8-15 years of overall professional experience.

• Minimum 5+ years of experience in FinOps, cloud financial management, or cloud cost optimization.

• Proven experience managing or leading FinOps initiatives across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP.

• Strong knowledge of:

• FinOps principles and operating models

• Cloud cost allocation

• Tagging governance

• Showback/chargeback

• Budgeting and forecasting

• RI/Savings Plan optimization

• Rightsizing and utilization

• Cost anomaly detection

• FinOps KPIs and benchmarking

• Experience with Cloudability, CloudHealth, AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, GCP Billing, or equivalent tools.

• Experience with Power BI, Tableau, or similar BI platforms.

• Understanding of automation concepts and experience working with Python, SQL, APIs, or scripting.

• Strong program/project management and stakeholder management skills.

• Excellent communication, presentation, and executive reporting abilities.

• Ability to engage with US-based clients and stakeholders during US business hours.

Preferred Qualifications

• FinOps Certified Practitioner or equivalent certification.
• Experience with consulting, managed services, Big 4, or GSI organizations.
• Experience supporting large enterprise or Fo