FinOps Specialist and Cloud Optimization

Detailed Job Description: Hiring Manager Note: FinOps for AI Consumption AI for FinOps FinOps for AI Consumption: The consultant will partner with AI, product, engineering, architecture, finance, and business teams to establish an enterprise framework for AI governance, cost optimization, and value realization. Key responsibilities include: Defining model routing, tagging, caching, guardrails, spend controls, and observability standards Building metrics and dashboards to measure AI adoption, usage, costs, and business outcomes Creating a scalable operating model that enables leadership to understand: Who is using AI How much it costs How efficiently it is being used What value it delivers AI for FinOps: The ideal candidate should also have hands-on experience leveraging AI to enhance FinOps functions, including: Anomaly detection Reporting and analytics Cost estimation Workload optimization Rate optimization Senior System Engineer (FinOps) Location: Bethesda, MD 20814 (Remote Possible 1 day/week to office) Duration: CTH (Contracts to hire possible), 6-12 months of contracts initially The Senior Systems Engineer will be a technical expert responsible for driving measurable savings and financial accountability across public cloud platforms by engineering automation for tagging compliance, budget & anomaly guardrails, and workload optimization. This role will be responsible for enabling cost transparency, optimization, forecasting, chargeback/showback, anomaly detection, and unit economics across public cloud, container platforms, data services, and emerging AI/GenAI workloads. The position will partner with Engineering, Finance, Product, Architecture, Security, Procurement, and AI/ML teams to build scalable FinOps capabilities that improve financial accountability, optimize cloud and AI consumption, and connect technology spend to measurable business value. This position requires a strong blend of cloud engineering, financial analytics, automation, AI/ML cost management, and stakeholder leadership. Required Bachelor s degree in an engineering or computer science discipline and/or equivalent experience/certification 7+ years experience in information technology including experience in Cloud technologies (AWS, AliCloud, Azure), OS scripting, automation (e.g. Python, Bash) 3+ years of experience in developing and implementing FinOps/Cloud Cost Optimization strategies Preferred Excellent problem-solving skills by working independently and through leading outcomes for cross functional teams Excellent verbal and written communication skills for a wide range of audiences including executives, business stakeholders and IT teams Familiarity with services such as Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, OpenAI APIs, Anthropic, Databricks, Snowflake AI, or similar platforms Responsibilities: Analyzes cloud usage - Monitoring cloud usage patterns, resource utilization, and spending to identify areas for improvement Designs and implements AI-enabled FinOps capabilities for cloud cost visibility, forecasting, anomaly detection, optimization recommendations, and executive reporting Establishes FinOps governance for AI/ML and GenAI workloads, including cost allocation, usage tracking, forecasting, budgeting, and optimization Analyzes, optimizing, and implementing cost optimization actions across different cloud services Implements and manages automated tools to help identify cost trends and anomalies Collaborating with teams - Working with finance and business teams to align cloud spending with budgetary constraints Provides technical leadership, oversight, governance and direction for services related to client s solution delivery Provides technical expertise to project team for successful project and change implementations Determines customer requirements and works with sourced resources to develop solutions Leads analysis of current environment for deficiencies and provides solutions Provides input into lifecycle, improvement, and standardization strategies Develops and generates periodic utilization reports to provide visibility to performance, capacity, availability and SLA management Utilize capacity data to model future state planning with overall strategy and goals Provides and presents status, analysis and reporting to internal stakeholders, Executive Management and Senior Leadership Trains and/or mentors other team members, and peers as appropriate Mindlance is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of Minority/Gender/Disability/Religion/LGBTQI/Age/Veterans.