Title: (Senior) FinOps Expert
Summary:
We are looking for a (Senior) FinOps Expert to own and evolve our cloud financial operations on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service with a primary focus on cost visibility, optimization, and financial governance across our cloud estate. You will be part of FinOps and Governance Team, working with topics such as detailed Azure billing and usage data into actionable insights, cost optimizations, and policies that maximize value from our cloud spend.
Key responsibilities
- Proactively monitor, collect, and analyze cloud usage/spending data to identify cost drivers, waste, and opportunities for optimization.
- Collaborate with application, platform, and data engineering teams to design cost‑efficient architectures and embed FinOps practices into infrastructure design.
- Proactively follow up with resource group owners to act on cost optimization opportunities
- Develop and implement strategies and automation to reduce cloud costs, such as right-sizing resources, managing reserved instances (RIs) and Savings Plans, and implementing policy-as-code for resource governance.
- Drive a culture of financial accountability by implementing accurate cost allocation, showback/chargeback mechanisms for various cost lever, and creating clear, actionable cost visibility reports and dashboards for engineering and business stakeholders.
- Assist with developing and maintaining cloud cost forecasting models and tracking actual spend against budgets, providing alerts for anomalies or unplanned spikes.
- Partner closely with engineering, DevOps, finance, and business teams to embed FinOps principles into the application development lifecycle, providing guidance and training on cost-efficient cloud architectures and best practices.
- Define, implement, and enforce proper resource tagging policies to ensure accurate cost attribution and allocation across business units, environments, and applications.
- Collaborate with cloud and SaaS service providers to understand pricing models, discounts, and assist in negotiating contracts to ensure cost-effectiveness.
- Regularly review and refine FinOps processes, tools, and methodologies to increase efficiency and effectiveness in cloud financial management.
- Drive quality accountability within the organization with well-defined processes, metrics, and goals for process quality.
Required Skills:
- Bachelor’s or Masters’s Degree in computer science or related discipline; or equivalent work experience
- Deep familiarity with Azure Cost Management, Azure Advisor, Azure Billing exports, and related FinOps tooling for monitoring, analysis, and optimization
- Understanding of tagging strategies, resource hierarchy design, and account/subscription structure and policy enforcement.
- Automation (scripting in Python/Bash, APIs for cost data extraction)
- Simple data extraction via an API into dashboards/Excel would be extremely helpful
- Optimization practices: rightsizing, storage tiering, spot instance usage, autoscaling strategies
- Familiar with FinOps Framework (cloud cost culture, unit economics, accountability)
- Strong communication, partnership, teamwork and influencing skills required that can close the gaps between technology and finance.
- Excellent time management, communication, decision-making, presentation, and organizational skills.
- Demonstrated knowledge and depth in cloud services.
- Relevant Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate or Professional
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- Azure Administrator
- FinOps Certified Practitioner
- FinOps Certified Professional – advanced
- BI tools (Power BI) for visibility dashboards
- Python for automation of cost reporting
About Cognizant
Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization’s unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at cognizant.ai or @cognizant.
Additional employment information
Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.
Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview.
Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial or local laws.
