Cloud FinOps Lead

As part of Cloud Transformation, Cloud FinOps main goal is to ensure that AXA XL’s Cloud spend is well understood, governed and managed. Cloud FinOps Lead is a crucial role in the organisation, with primary responsibility to manage Cloud cost optimisation strategies and resource allocation, aiming for efficient and cost-effective business processes. They play a vital role in financial planning and analysis, monitoring and communicating key performance indicators for management to make data-driven decisions, oversee and guide the FinOps team, ensuring seamless collaboration with other teams such as application development, architecture, financial accounting, and management.

What you’ll be doing

Key responsibilities of this role are to lead a team to enhance FinOps practices in AXA XL:

• Develop and implement FinOps frameworks, including policies, processes, and best practices, to ensure effective cloud financial management aligned with organisational goals. Collaborate with cloud engineers, DevOps, finance, and procurement teams is key to integrating FinOps principles and promoting responsible cloud usage.
• Create financial dashboards, provide insights and forecasts to senior stakeholders, and foster a culture of cloud financial responsibility through training. Manage Azure cloud service budgets, participate in CSP negotiations via Procurement, and conduct regular FinOps maturity assessments to drive continuous improvement.
• Report on accuracy, policy compliance and leading initiatives to enhance cloud financial management in line with industry best practices and assigned budget. Build and implement data-driven reporting allowing to identify cost-saving opportunities, optimising resources, and tracking utilisation for efficiency. Provide timely, transparent and accurate cloud consumption costing information and recommendations for optimisation.
• Outline, communicate and foster R&R ownership and governance across teams (application development, architecture, finance, management, business) in order to optimize synergies and encourage joint goals. Assist building of the FinOps community within application teams to increase maturity and ensure they have the Fin/Ops knowledge they need to be responsible for their own costs.
• Maintain AXA XL Cloud business case to ensure that cost forecasts are maintained for the IT estate over the migration period (2023-2026) and that we can achieve run rate savings, this includes:
  • Periodic refresh of business case as we learn more and to keep it updated with actuals
  • Maintaining average cost profiles of applications migrating to cloud and then updating cloud cost forecasts in line with migrations
  • Assist with yearly budget process to ensure budget requests are in line with the business case forecasts
• Active membership of AXA Group’s FinOps community to gain from and share learnings with the community. Also produce quarterly reporting required by Group.
• Maintain a good understanding of the cloud provider pricing models so that can work with Application Teams to give recommendations on potential cost savings. Work with technical teams to drive technical optimisations such as right sizing.
• Calculate cloud costs and set budgets for applications as part of the project processes, once live then monitor actual spend against the budget. Manage project recharge process where applicable, or raise alerts if applications spend higher than agreed budget
• Reconciliation of monthly invoicing to our CSP usage and ensure that service credits are given where applicable and that we are tracking against committed spend
• Implement the budget and alert framework for any threshold spikes or anomalies to take preventative action if necessary

You will report to AXA XL’s Global Head of GT Transformation.

What you’ll bring

We’re looking for someone who has these abilities and skills:

• Certified FinOps professional with preferably finance background and experience. E.g FinOps Certified Practitioner, Cost Management & Finance Qualifications
• Proven ability in conducting and presenting sophisticated and creative analysis of complex data and translating the results into actionable deliverables, messages, and presentations to various audiences (technical teams, finance teams, senior management)
• Effective financial and analytical skills with ideally good experience in Cloud Service Consumption Modelling tools in a large-scale IT infrastructure and application environment
• Excellent communication (verbal and written) and leadership skills, with a track record of presenting to senior management. Excellent cross department and cross Group collaboration skills.
• Good understanding of Cloud computing technologies, AZ900 Azure Fundamentals would be beneficial. Deep experience of Microsoft Office Suite required (extensive knowledge of Power BI and Excel required)