Staff FinOps Analyst, Enterprise AI

Overview

This role helps lead enterprise-wide financial management for AI usage by making AI spend visible, predictable, and tied to value. The organization is building an Enterprise AI Center of Excellence within its Enterprise Technology & Business Platforms team, and this position will establish and run the FinOps approach for AI consumption across seats, models/APIs, cloud AI services, data platforms, SaaS add-ons/credits, and agent usage.

The role is focused on strategy and insights (not building pipelines), partnering with Technology Operations and Data Engineering for dashboards and data delivery.

Responsibilities

• Own the full picture of AI spend across the organization, including:
  • Seat licenses
  • Model and API usage
  • Cloud AI services (e.g., AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI)
  • Usage-based AI inside platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks)
  • AI add-ons and credits in SaaS contracts
  • Agent and agent-action usage (internally built or vendor-provided with per-agent/per-action charges)
• Build and maintain an AI FinOps framework, including:
  • Spend metrics and definitions
  • Guardrails
  • A monthly operating rhythm
• Turn spend into executive-ready insight by identifying drivers of spend, growth areas, value delivered, and waste; brief leaders and Finance on what the data means and recommended actions.
• Forecast and plan AI spend using business unit forecasting and scenario models for planning cycles, new rollouts, and pricing changes.
• Build business cases through cost models and TCO analysis for new AI tools and major rollouts to inform portfolio decisions.
• Monitor spend and explain variance:
  • Identify spend anomalies
  • Define alert thresholds (implemented by Enterprise IT)
  • Explain variance to budget each month
• Build allocation and chargeback reporting:
  • Each month, map AI spend to business units and cost centers
  • Provide usage data to FP&A and Accounting for vendor invoice reconciliation, chargeback, and accounting booking
• Recommend optimizations to reduce waste without slowing teams down, including:
  • Access tier changes
  • Spend caps
  • Model mix adjustments
  • Idle seat reduction
  • Removal/coordination of overlapping tools
• Measure unit economics and value by tracking cost per active user, per use case, per agent run, and per outcome, partnering with the Principal Product Manager, Enterprise AI, to align with value measurement.
• Inform vendor and renewal strategy by analyzing actual usage against commitments, comparing pricing models, and presenting findings to renewals and negotiations.
• Own AI spend reporting requirements:
  • Define what dashboards show, for whom, and how often
  • Partner with Technology Operations to deliver dashboards

What this role does not own

• Budget decisions
• Setting or running chargeback (FP&A)
• Booking entries (Accounting)
• Configuring caps and limits in the platform (Enterprise IT)
• Building data pipelines (Data Engineering)
• Leading vendor negotiations (Procurement and business owners)
• Costs of AI features in customer-facing products (out of scope)

Requirements

• 6+ years in FinOps, IT finance, cloud cost management, or FP&A for technology spend
• Experience managing consumption-based spend, such as cloud, data platforms, or AI
• Strong SQL and Tableau (or similar BI tools), with comfort pulling, checking, and exploring data directly even though Technology Operations owns pipelines and dashboards
• Experience building forecasts, scenario models, and cost allocation or chargeback processes
• Ability to communicate clearly with executives and Finance and turn complex numbers into practical recommendations
• Experience partnering across finance, engineering, data, procurement, and business teams
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and building structure where none currently exists

Preferred Qualifications

• FinOps Certified Practitioner or FinOps for AI certification
• Familiarity with AI token pricing and usage models
• Experience with cost tools for Snowflake, Databricks, or AWS

Compensation & Benefits

• Base pay range: 129,600.00 - 178,200.00 USD Annual
• This role may also be eligible for Equity Compensation and/or Bonus Incentive Compensation.
• Actual compensation will be based on job-related skills, experience, education or training, and location.

Location

• Austin, Texas office (based in Austin)
• Also open to great candidates anywhere in the U.S.

Additional Information (Fair Chance / Los Angeles County)

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

• Employment consideration includes qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.
• A criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment:
  • Appropriately managing, accessing, and handling confidential information, including proprietary and trade secret information, as well as accessing the organization’s information technology systems and platforms
  • Interacting with and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external customers, stakeholders, and/or colleagues
  • Exercising sound judgment

Reporting

Reports to the Senior Director, Technology Transformation & Enterprise AI.