Cloud Economist

We are seeking a Cloud Economist to become a founding member of our team. As a passionate cloud advocate, you will use your financial and technical expertise to develop and establish global best practices in cost and vendor management to ensure that Ashurst achieves the best possible value from public cloud.

You will advise on approaches to improve all aspects of cost management, from tagging of resources through to the use of cloud native technologies and licence optimisation. You will be a key member of the team designing cloud platforms that are fit-for-purpose, aligning with industry best practices and Ashurst’s Digital Strategy

Main responsibilities:

• Partner with the wider architecture team, finance, procurement, IT and our internal customers to develop that solutions are cost optimized throughout their lifecycle
• Define metrics, KPIs and reports for cost and chargeback management
• Provide insight needed to make investment decisions when moving services to the cloud
• Build and maintain rolling Cloud expenditure forecasts
• Become a Terms of Service (ToS) expert
• Ensure database and applications are right-sized
• Monitor and analyse billing and metering to optimize subscription plans
• Review implications behind feature updates
• Act as an ambassador between Ashurst and cloud service providers
• Stay appraised of the latest technologies/tools and champion new mechanisms to better understand and manage cloud costs

Risk and Control: Ensure that all activities and duties are carried out in full compliance with our regulatory requirements and internal policies.

Essential skills and experience:

• 2+ yrs experience in cloud cost visibility, cloud cost optimisation and cloud cost management preferably within Azure.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft volume licensing, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365
• Strong verbal and written communications skills, with the ability to simply and clearly communicate technical concepts to a non-technical audience
• Able to work in teams remotely in a global context
• Able to learn and understand current business processes and help to model new processes/procedures.
• Excellent analytical skills
• Excellent prioritisation and time management skills, with the ability to work across a number of major projects simultaneously.
• Experience of managing and developing productive working relationships with vendors
• Uses initiative – ‘can do’ approach.

Desired skills and experience:

• Working towards or achieved FinOps certification
• Experience of using PowerBI to interrogate data and create business insights
• Experience of Enterprise Architecture and Service Management frameworks