{"id":142875,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer","title":"Senior Cloud FinOps engineer","company":{"id":3614,"name":"AHEAD","domain":"ahead.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/ahead","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":46,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.804,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":74,"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":160000,"max":175000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":175000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"FinOps","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"PowerShell","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Jira","optional":true},{"name":"Power BI","optional":true},{"name":"ServiceNow","optional":true},{"name":"Tableau","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-27T19:12:13Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-22T21:33:43Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":56,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":56},"description":"The Senior Cloud FinOps Engineer leads complex cloud financial management, optimization, and governance activities across multiple managed services clients. This role combines deep public cloud engineering knowledge, financial and operational analysis, customer-facing advisory capability, and execution discipline to help clients improve visibility, accountability, forecasting accuracy, unit economics, and cost efficiency across AWS, Azure, and GCP.\nAs a senior member of the practice, this engineer is a recognized subject matter expert who owns higher-complexity analyses, leads written deliverables and client-facing advisory discussions, mentors other engineers, and drives improvements to standards, automation, and repeatable delivery practices across the FinOps service offering. The role operates with a high degree of commercial awareness and mature communication skills, engaging service owners, process owners, finance and procurement stakeholders, and executive audiences directly.\nThe role is performed remotely within the United States and includes up to 10 percent domestic travel, along with occasional after-hours or weekend support during major incidents, reporting deadlines, approved change windows, or other activities required by contracted service commitments.\nDuties / Responsibilities\nCloud Cost Analysis and Optimization\nLead 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.\nIdentify, quantify, prioritize, and drive optimization opportunities including rightsizing, idle resource cleanup, storage and data transfer optimization, licensing alignment, and scheduling strategies.\nTrack optimization opportunities through identified, recommended, approved, implemented, and realized states, validating financial outcomes and avoiding double-counting or attribution of unrealized savings.\nLead cost visibility and allocation for containerized and Kubernetes workloads, including shared cluster cost distribution, namespace and label-based allocation, and idle capacity analysis.\nAnalyze 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.\nExtend cost analysis to SaaS, software licensing, and marketplace spend where these fall within the agreed scope of the engagement.\nConduct best-practices reviews that combine cost analysis with operational excellence analysis, using cloud-native and approved AHEAD tooling.\nAllocation, Unit Economics, and Reporting\nLead complex cost allocation and tagging efforts, including governance standards, mapping logic, reporting accuracy, inherited tag strategies, and treatment of non-taggable resources.\nDefine and maintain unit economics and cost-per-unit metrics that tie cloud spend to business drivers such as customers, transactions, environments, products, or workloads.\nOwn or lead creation of dashboards, reports, budgets, forecasts, showback and chargeback views, executive summaries, and recurring service review content.\nLead 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.\nImplement and maintain continuous tagging governance through cloud-native policy enforcement and automated remediation scripting, refining coverage as untagged or non-compliant resources are identified.\nMaintain client-facing FinOps tooling and portals, ensuring predictive analytics, multi-account views, and resource, configuration, and environment change reporting remain current and accurate.\nCommitment and Rate Optimization\nManage 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.\nSupport enterprise agreement, private pricing, and committed-spend discussions by providing consumption analysis, commitment scenarios, and drawdown forecasts to client and AHEAD stakeholders.\nClient Advisory and Communication\nDevelop and present financially grounded recommendations that translate technical findings into business value for engineering, finance, procurement, and executive stakeholders.\nCommunicate with external customers, including senior management, on matters requiring explanation, interpretation, and advisory judgment, and help client leadership set strategic direction beyond individual tactics.\nTranslate customer business requirements into technical and financial requirements, and write or lead complex deliverables within the practice.\nPartner with CloudOps, DevOps, platform, application, finance, procurement, and client stakeholders to support implementation of recommendations and validate realized outcomes.\nMaintain timely ticket updates, work documentation, meeting follow-ups, and internal and customer communications in accordance with service delivery expectations.\nFacilitate 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.\nEngineering, Automation, and Delivery Leadership\nBuild 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.\nIntegrate 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.\nProvide credible time and effort estimates based on available information, and prioritize and complete work independently within committed timelines while meeting established quality standards.\nProvide technical leadership and coordinate technical delivery resources across skillsets when required, including cross-practice work and deliverables, without direct personnel-management responsibility.\nInitiate and participate in authoring project change requests when additional work is identified beyond agreed scope.\nExecute 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.\nMonitor delivery hours against contracted monthly allocations, flagging utilization trends and coordinating any approved overage or rescoping through the change-request process.\nMentorship and Practice Development\nMentor Cloud FinOps Engineers and other team members by reviewing work, sharing methods, improving documentation, and elevating team capability and consistency.\nContribute 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.\nInfluence direct team members, the broader internal team, and external customers to adopt new concepts, best practices, and approaches.\nServe as a reliable resource for thought leadership content, workshops, industry conferences, and webinars representing the practice.\nSupport 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.\nDeliver FinOps and tooling education and training for client teams to build internal cost-management capability, in addition to mentoring within the AHEAD practice.\nGeneral\nMaintain 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.\nParticipate in the team's on-call or escalation rotation where applicable to the assigned account portfolio.\nStay current on cloud pricing models, FinOps best practices, and service capabilities while helping refine how AHEAD delivers cloud cost optimization and advisory services.\nProvide occasional after-hours support for client meetings, reporting deadlines, change windows, critical incidents, or urgent cost-related issues when required.\nMaintain relevant professional and cloud certifications consistent with role, practice, and individual development requirements, and meet or exceed individual goal objectives.\nOther job duties as assigned.\nEducation and Experience\nMinimum Required -\nBachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, finance, business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and practical experience.\n5+ years of combined experience in cloud engineering, cloud operations, infrastructure, or cloud cost management, including at least 3 years focused on cloud financial management, cost optimization, or FinOps.\n3+ years in a customer-facing, stakeholder-facing, consulting, or service delivery role with responsibility for presenting findings and recommendations to both technical and business audiences.\nHands-on experience designing, deploying, or operating large-scale, multi-account, multi-subscription, or enterprise cloud environments.\nSubject matter expertise in at least one major public cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP); strong Azure or AWS experience preferred, with GCP exposure considered a plus.\nWorking proficiency in SQL and at least one scripting language such as Python or PowerShell, sufficient to query and transform cost datasets and automate recurring reporting.\nExperience using cloud cost management, billing analysis, or reporting platforms, whether native cloud tools or approved third-party solutions.\nDemonstrated experience integrating third-party tools, billing data sources, and reporting platforms.\nStrong analytical, spreadsheet, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a shared services or multi-client environment.\nMust be legally authorized to work in the United States.\nAbility to successfully complete AHEAD and client-required background screening; certain client environments may require additional vetting or clearance.\nPreferred Experience\nExperience working in a managed services, consulting, or outsourced service delivery environment.\nExperience supporting more than one public cloud provider in a FinOps or cost optimization capacity.\nRelevant certifications such as FinOps Certified Practitioner, FinOps Certified Professional, or AWS, Azure, and GCP certifications.\nExperience with platforms such as Harness CCM, Apptio Cloudability, CloudZero, Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python, or PowerShell.\nExperience with forecasting, budgeting, allocation methodologies, showback or chargeback models, commitment planning, and savings realization tracking.\nFamiliarity with the FinOps Framework and with standardized billing data formats such as FOCUS.\nExperience with Kubernetes or container cost allocation, and with AI or GPU cost management.\nExperience leading or mentoring junior engineers and reviewing deliverables for quality and consistency.\nFamiliarity with ticketing and workflow platforms such as ServiceNow, Jira, or similar tools.\nExperience contributing to pre-sales activities, including scoping, positioning, and technology adoption.\nKnowledge , Skills , Abilities\nAdvanced understanding of cloud billing constructs including on-demand usage, reserved capacity, savings plans or commitments, amortization, allocation methods, and forecasting drivers.\nWorking knowledge of unit economics concepts and the ability to connect infrastructure consumption to business and product metrics.\nUnderstanding of performance, scaling, and...","description_format":"text","description_chars":16191,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["IT Consulting & Digital Transformation","Managed IT Services (MSP)","AI Consulting & Integration","Cloud Consulting & Migration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-27T19:12:13Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 23 · green card filings: 4","filings_12m":23,"filings_prev_12m":21,"green_card_filings_12m":4,"median_offered_wage_usd":151759,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":14}],"liveness":{"score":32,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.533,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":55,"expected_fill_days":74,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:late","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":175000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/ahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/ahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-23T00:09:10Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":202,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-24T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3614},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3614"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/ahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fahead-senior-cloud-finops-engineer"}]}