Senior Azure FinOps Engineer

Position Summary

FinOps Engineers at Excella are experts in maturing cloud cost management practices and identifying and implementing opportunities to create the most efficient, cost-effective cloud infrastructure possible.

Mindset:
You might be the right person for this role if you are knowledgeable in optimizing cloud systems to align with the Azure Well-Architected Framework, and especially skilled in balancing cost optimization with performance.

• Cost optimization: Managing costs to maximize the value delivered
• Performance efficiency: The ability of a system to adapt to changes in load
• Operational excellence: Operations processes that keep a system running in production.
• Security: Protecting applications and data from threats.
• Reliability: The ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function

Responsibilities

We are looking for FinOps Engineers with demonstrated experience in the following areas:

• Cloud cost optimization: Identify and implement opportunities for cost savings, including implementing automated tools and scripts to manage underutilized resources
• Cost visibility and reporting: Creating dashboards and analysis into cloud costs, including through tools such as Azure Cost Management, Apptio or Power BI
• Cloud resource governance: Define resource tagging best practices and work with organizations to implement practices aligned with budgets
• Technical consulting: You are able to advise other technical and non-technical practitioners regarding best practices, opportunities for cost savings and implementation of those opportunities, and you have a solid understanding of cloud architectures 
• FinOps project management: You are able to navigate customers through initial conversations to understand their needs, perform assessments of their cloud architecture, make and implement recommendations, and oversee continuous improvements as cloud resources scale
• Financial/data analysis: Your analytical skills enable you to pull data from multiple sources, provide views with the necessary level of granularity, and curate datasets to present information and insights to various audiences and in the context of varying business questions 

Qualifications / Skills 

You will have experience with using, supporting, administering, and leveraging tools in the following areas:

• Cloud Architecture: Solid knowledge of strategies to build cloud architectures balancing cost effectiveness and performance
• Cloud Cost Management and Optimization: Experience with Cost Analysis Tooling such as Azure Cost Management, AWS Cost Explorer, or Google Cloud Billing
• Leadership: Experience serving as a key subject-matter expert or thought leader to individuals to internal and external teams. Project planning and execution of enterprise level cloud solutions in an Agile environment. Driving achievable technical outcomes through hands-on technical subject matter expertise. You solve problems, and you help others do so.
• Financial Analysis and Reporting: Ability to generate and interpret cost reports, and understand key financial metrics
• Governance and Policy Implementation: Experience in setting up cost control mechanisms and governance policies to prevent cloud overspending and audit ability.
• Azure: 3 years of experience with Azure cloud platforms in a technical, operational, or financial role.
• Resource Management Tools: Proficiency with scripting and automation tools (e.g., PowerShell, Python, or Terraform) for resource management and optimization.
• FinOps Principles: Experience with FinOps principles and cloud financial management practices.
• Communication: Excellent communication skills to collaborate with technical and non-technical teams.
• Data Visualization: Experience with BI tools like Power BI or Tableau for creating cost visualization dashboards.

Preferred:

• Azure or FinOps certifications (e.g., Azure Solutions Architect, Azure Administrator, or FinOps Certified Practitioner).
• Knowledge of financial forecasting, budgeting, and accounting practices related to cloud services.
• Understanding of DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) and the capabilities within the DORA capability catalog is encouraged.