Principal Cloud & AI FinOps Analyst

Overview

This role involves scaling FinOps as a service for internal stakeholders, combining multi-cloud FinOps execution with advanced analytics, Business Systems Analysis, and product ownership for an expanding AI asset portfolio.

As generative AI becomes embedded in engineering and corporate workflows, you will strengthen FinOps practices through shared accountability and transparency. You will build self-service capabilities and use automation to accelerate insight, recommendations, and optimization execution across major public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and specialized SaaS AI platforms, developer tooling, and API foundation models (e.g., Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, Cursor).

Responsibilities

• Serve as the FinOps Product Owner for stakeholder-facing capabilities, including multi-cloud and AI spend dashboards, data reporting, documentation, enablement, automation self-service, and intake workflows
• Maintain a FinOps services portal as the primary self-service entry point, enabling stakeholders to discover available cloud/AI services, understand optimization guidelines, and request automated license or budget help
• Evolve the operating model for FinOps as a service, including roadmap development, backlog prioritization, and continuous improvement cycles for both cloud infrastructure and AI developer tools
• Lead a FinOps Champion Network across engineering, finance, and product teams, establishing shared goals, playbooks, and office hours to improve stakeholder self-sufficiency
• Drive governance and decision-quality practices, including showback/chargeback adoption, KPI standardization, strict infrastructure tagging, and AI tool user-attribution expectations
• Build, maintain, and iterate dashboards and reporting in Apptio Cloudability, Apptio BI, and Turbonomic, ensuring metric definitions, data quality checks, and stakeholder usability
• Establish usage tracking, user seat auditing, and token consumption analytics for developer and corporate AI applications (e.g., Cursor, ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude) to identify underutilized licenses or inefficient prompt token usage
• Develop repeatable analyses for spend anomalies, monthly variance, and key cost drivers (e.g., unexpected surges in third-party foundation model APIs or ETL tools), and translate results into actionable summaries for technical and non-technical leaders
• Define and maintain reporting standards, allocation logic, and tagging/labeling requirements to ensure trust, consistency, and accurate cost attribution to specific business units and cost centers
• Identify cost optimization opportunities and productize them into repeatable, automated motions, including detection, recommendation generation, execution workflows (with approvals), and post-change verification
• Support service owners with forecasting future cloud and AI tooling spend, tracking performance against budget, and producing variance narratives; manage and improve effective cloud rates and AI vendor agreements through commitments, negotiated pricing, and discount levers
• Partner with cloud and automation engineering teams to implement guardrails that operationalize recommendations and prevent spend regressions

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Information Systems, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience as a Business Systems Analyst or FinOps Analyst, including requirements elicitation, process mapping, stakeholder facilitation, and shipping stakeholder-facing capabilities
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills, including the ability to structure ambiguous problems, define metrics, validate data, and communicate defensible, data-driven conclusions
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining dashboards in Apptio Cloudability, Apptio BI, Turbonomic, or closely comparable platform-native tooling
• Working knowledge of cloud billing and pricing constructs across a multi-cloud environment (AWS, Azure, GCP), combined with an understanding of SaaS/AI licensing models (user seats, token-based usage, API pricing tiers)
• Experience partnering with a technical community to drive infrastructure or SaaS lifecycle automation, including defining automation requirements, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including technical writing for documentation and executive-ready storytelling
• Demonstrated customer-focused service mindset, including setting clear expectations and continuously improving self-service visibility

Preferred Qualifications

• FinOps Certified Practitioner (FCP) or higher
• Cloud foundational certifications (AWS Cloud Practitioner, Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, or Google Cloud Digital Leader)
• Experience establishing governance frameworks, provisioning workflows, or chargeback mechanisms for AI tools, LLMs, or developer productivity applications

Compensation & Benefits

• For U.S.-based roles, starting base salary is expected between $98,000 and $175,450. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range.
• In addition to base salary, compensation may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Additional Information

• This role may require in-person onboarding and/or in-person ID verification.

Equal Employment Opportunity

The organization considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic, consistent with applicable law.