FinOps Lead

About the job

The Boots Cloud Centre of Excellence team is seeking an experienced FinOps Lead to join our growing International IT and Advanced Analytics (IT2A) function. This role has the flexibility to work from either our London, Weybridge or Nottingham offices on a flexible office/home hybrid approach.

We are looking for people who want to challenge the ‘norm’; we want to change how we use the Cloud and help our companies who have some awesome ideas on how we help our patients and customers aand the Cloud Centre of Excellence is pivotal to help our colleagues across IT and the wider business to make the most of the Cloud.

So, if you’re a great individual with the desire to make things happen and want to join a team of equally great people, please get in touch.

About the role:

As our new FinOps Lead you will be responsible for developing, maintaining, and supporting the cost management practices, developing cloud optimization and rightsizing opportunities, designing and implementing architectural models, pilot the choice of FinOps tools and processes, and foster innovation. You will work in the Cloud Centre of Excellence [CCoE] and will drive the implementation of the cloud strategy along with the introduction of new emerging technologies and public cloud services.

You will lead, develop, and implement the processes and capabilities required to ensure costs optimization. The Cloud FinOps Analyst is expected to possess excellent interpersonal, communication and listening skills necessary to effectively collaborate with key stakeholders across the organization.

Key responsibilities:

• Responsible for developing, maintaining, and supporting the cloud optimization practice and make recommendations on reserved capacity strategy, utilization optimization opportunities, product architectural recommendations to promote cost savings, and discounts for optimization.
• Lead, develop, and implement the processes and capabilities required that ensure costs optimization.
• Collaborate with technology teams to incorporate cost management best practices into cloud platforms via tagging, alerting and configurations that supports financial monitoring of cloud platforms.
• Create and oversee a cloud billing dashboard to track, manage and optimize cloud costs and Reserved Instance purchases.
• Perform consumption analysis to define and execute reserved instances and savings plans.
• Develop opportunities to optimize costs and operational improvement with key infrastructure and service providers.

What you’ll need to have:

• Knowledge of cloud design patterns, cloud operations and cloud cost models with experience implementing best practices or suggested improvements.
• Knowledge of app & data architectures and cloud native patterns for development, etc.
• Experience presenting technical ideas in business-friendly language
• Experience suggesting competitive and innovative technical decisions, obtaining client buy-in and delivering on commitments
• Experience re-architecting applications for cloud platforms.
• Experience in driving deep architectural discussions to help customers ensure they are making the most cost-efficient cloud usage choices.

It would be great if you also had:

• Certification: Cloud FinOps
• At least 2 years of experience contributing to financial business decisions in the workplace.

About our team – Cloud Centre of Excellence

WBA is the world’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. With over 2,500 stores in the UK, approaching 10,000 stores in the US and thousands more internationally, our purpose is to help our customers look and feel better than they ever thought possible.

WBA is continuing the journey we started a couple of years ago with the Cloud. We are now embarking on establishing our International (Boots UK, No 7 Beauty Company, Boots Opticians and International Retail) Cloud Centre of Excellence which will support and develop the services we look after today.

You will have the opportunity to help set up the Cloud Centre of Excellence from the start, so you can influence how we set ourselves up for success. This is an exciting time for us as we look to build a super team of brilliant people who can help our companies maximise the opportunities the Cloud brings to organisations. From setting up the FinOps function, through to working in Architecture to develop our strategies, to developing our Engineering capability around automation and AI, to all the way to supporting the services we have and making these even better.

What’s next

If your application is successful, our recruitment team will be in touch to arrange an interview and answer any initial questions you have. If you have not been successful on this occasion you will be notified by email.

We are always open to discussing possible flexible working options and what this may look like for you, including job share and reduced hours. If you require additional support as part of the application and interview process, we are happy to provide reasonable adjustments to enable you to be at your best.