Director, Cloud Financial Management

Company: Sun Life Published: 13th January 2023 Closing Date: 27th February 2023

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Job Description:

The Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) is central to accelerating Cloud Adoption at Sun Life. The CCoE is an outcome-based, cross functional team of highly technical consultants and engineers, who operate in an Agile/Scrum environment, with the objective to efficiently operate and support cloud applications. The CCOE owns the cloud strategy & roadmap, establishes the cloud service and defines cloud standards & governance. This is a hands-on technical team that supports migration of applications and streamlines the service delivery & assurance of cloud services to business units.

Cloud Financial Management is a discipline within the CCoE that enables organizations to get maximum business value from cloud by helping technology, finance, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions.  It serves as a central point for the Chargeback Process, Budgeting and Forecasting, Reporting and Cost optimization Practices for Cloud globally and must be able to advise the business on decisions to ensure that the business is financially successful. The role is responsible for obtaining business case approval and to drive financial accountability and a cost conscience culture at the intersection of Finance, Business and Technology.

Roles & Responsibilities:

Proactively manage cloud spending, bring financial accountability and predictability to cloud costs, break down silos to increase cost conscious culture, manage spending and usage for Cloud @ scale.

Leadership Responsibility:                                                           

• Develops strategy and sets direction for the Cloud Financial Management function and influences broadly.
• Acts as a role model. Mentors and develops less experienced peers
• Provides thought leadership for Cloud. Viewed as a trusted advisor and establishes high level credibility with Senior Leadership team
• Drives best practices, enforcing the highest standards

Define, lead and Influence Cloud Financial Management strategy

• Lead and influence Cloud strategy based on financial models. Quantify benefits of running applications in the cloud
• Define strategy and process on Cloud operating budget financial management
• Drive and own all TCO/economic related activities for the CCOE
• Influence senior leaders the economic value proposition for cloud computing

Lead the development of guidelines and standards

• Define and develop standard TCO framework and dynamic analytic model to be utilized by CCOE
• Establish and implement strategy and guidelines for Reserve Instance, On-demand, and Spot instance, etc.
• Establish and implement guardrails to optimize cost performance
• Mature approach for alerting when costs are higher than expected within a billing cycle

Lead Financial Cost Modeling

• Mange costing model, including Cloud infrastructure cost, people, and training costs for CCOE
• Design cost and revenue models  and forecasts for budget reviews
• Mature Cost Allocation Models and TCO Cost Estimating processes
• Assess the comparative costs of running applications on the Cloud

Financial oversight and management of cloud operating budgets and/or chargeback to customers

• Present business reviews to senior management team regarding progress and roadblocks on TCO topics
• Report to business application owners on cloud services consumption costs that will  be charged back to the respective line of business/cost center
• Forecast Cloud costs to business application owners to support budgeting process

Lead Financial Tracking and monitoring

• Develop and administer reporting and tracking system of all TCO/economic related activities
• Partner with Cloud Architects to optimize cost performance and establish financial cloud suitability framework for migration opportunities
• Identify and leverage cost optimization opportunities

Stakeholder Management; Evangelism and community-building

• Engages multiple stakeholders across the CCOE and the wider organization
• Influences multiple stakeholders, including: Application Teams,  CCOE Team members, Cloud Partners & Consumes, Vendors

• Coaches and mentors on the Financials of Cloud, across the CCOE and the organization

Required qualifications:

• Experience of working in an Agile/Scrum environment
• Understands cloud computing technologies and workload transition challenges
• Extensive experience with cloud computing technologies and workload transition challenges
• Knowledge of technology infrastructure, network, compute, storage, and virtualization
• Familiar with / basic knowledge of building IaaS and PaaS solutions
• Knowledge of designing available, cost efficient, fault tolerant, and scalable distributed systems
• Extensive experience with large and complex legacy IT environments, with data center economics including data center migration and refresh cycles, with common enterprise virtualization environments
• Sound understanding of complexities of IT environments
• Extensive experience working with senior business and IT stakeholders on Business case / value analysis / TCO solutions / Cost optimization solutions / Analysis of implementation options for on-premise, remote virtualized and cloud IT Infrastructures
• Extensive experience of financial modeling and analysis of large scale IT infrastructure, application and/or service investments, including baselining the total cost of ownership, detailed scenario analysis and functionality tradeoffs
• Deep experience in financial modeling of IT applications and infrastructures
• Experience of creating detailed cost models
• Extensive experience in building and operating financial control and analysis systems (cloud cost analysis, showback, and chargeback)
• Experience understanding how cloud resources are tagged
• Financial reporting experience on: financial data, cost savings, report on charging back to customers
• Experience using tools to perform billbacks and showbacks

Competencies:

• Ability to work in an Agile/Scrum environment. Ability to deliver in sprints and work as a team
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize deadlines
• Ability to operate in cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams
• Customer focused with an attitude to deliver excellent customer outcomes through technical expertise
• Ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges
• Ability to take “ownership” with high sense of urgency and work like an “entrepreneur”
• Problem solving, analytics and resolution skills
• Ability to think outside the box
• Exceptional and effective verbal & written communication skills
• Ability to clearly articulate messages to a variety of audiences
• Demonstrated ability to effectively influence at the most senior levels (e.g. SVP, VP, Director), and be effective and influential
• Stakeholder management
• Continuously strives to learn and makes time for self-development

Certifications:

• Relevant degree in Financial Management
• Computer Science background
• MBA or equivalent relevant business experience
• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner an asset
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate as asset

What’s in it for you?

• Great Place to Work® Certified in Canada and the US – 2022
• Great Place to Work® list for Best Workplaces for #HybridWork – 2022
• Great Place to Work® list for Best Workplaces for Professional Development in Canada – 2022
• Great Place to Work® list for Best Workplaces in Canada – 2022
• Named “Best Places to Work” by Glassdoor – 2021
• Canada Award for Excellence for Mental Health at Work – 2021
• Flexible hybrid work model. #LI-Hybrid.
• Pension, stock and savings programs to help build and enhance your future financial security
• Work and professional development that is united by our Purpose: to help Clients and Employees achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives
• A friendly, collaborative and inclusive culture
• Be part of our continuous improvement journey in developing the next greatest digital enterprise experience.
• Competitive salary and bonus structure influenced by market range data
• A common sense dress code, where you decide how you dress based on your day
• The opportunity to move along a variety of career paths with amazing networking potential