FinOps Analyst

UCAS is the go-to place for UK higher education, apprenticeships, and lifelong learning. We inspire and empower people, providers and employers to achieve their potential and thrive through choices in education, skills, and learning.

We’re a successful and fast-growing organisation, which helps hundreds of thousands of people every year. We’re committed to delivering a first-class service to all of our customers — they’re at the heart of everything we do

The Digital Delivery business unit runs UCAS’ day-to-day frontline services, digital products and technical infrastructure for all customers, including applicants and providers. The unit is also responsible for developing and improving customer-centric products in close collaboration with UCAS’ product function.

Services to customers include the Customer Experience Centre, providing comprehensive high quality services to support applicants in their journey into university and other higher education provision. Digital Delivery is responsible for running UCAS’ Confirmation and Clearing service, and logistics related to key deadlines in the cycle.

Working in cross-company multi-disciplinary teams comprising customer insight, product managers, architects, developers, testers, and data scientists, the Digital Delivery business unit ensures that UCAS is a customer-centric, product-focused digital business, connecting students with their next opportunity.

Reporting to the Platform Engineering Manager and embedded in the Product & Platform Engineering team, this role will help build the knowledge, team and policies that will help our Engineers understand and control costs in the Cloud and SaaS tooling. Working closely with colleagues in Engineering, Finance and Commercial you will develop and operate a robust program for Cloud cost management that includes but is not limited to tagging frameworks and governance model, budgets, cost optimisation lifecycle, chargebacks and finance integration.

• Utilising both Cloud native and third-party cost management toolsets to drive commercial and cost avoidance optimisations across our Cloud estate (AWS and Azure).

• Planning and executing Cloud savings plans, reservations and commitment-based savings plans.

• Identifying consumption trends and future capacity needs of engineering teams across UCAS

• Building, maintaining, and improving custom reports and dashboards to deliver weekly/monthly cost reporting to senior managers and our finance/commercial business partners.

• Tracking actual invoiced spend against forecasts and reporting upon it monthly to Exec and SMG budget holders.

• Detecting and highlighting anomalies in Cloud usage, working with engineering teams to understand these anomalies.

• Defining and implementing a new FinOps governance framework and roadmap of FinOps activity to maximise and optimise our Cloud spend

For full job description, please see role profile attached.

• Strong experience of Cloud cost optimization and the Cloud FinOps sector.

• A strong understanding of AWS and Azure compute technologies (ideally certified at foundation level for
  respective platform).

• Demonstrable experience of managing and executing commitment-based savings plans for AWS and
  Azure.

• Demonstrable experience of Cloud cost management tooling (e.g. AWS Cost explorer, Azure Cost
  Management, Cloudhealth, Cloudability, etc.).

• Previous experience in technology and/or finance or data analytics.

• Demonstrable experience creating analytical and financial models for data-driven decisions.

• Demonstrable experience building BI dashboards (Quicksight, Looker, Domo, PowerBI, etc…).

• Ability to work independently with strong attention to detail and accuracy.

• Experience of working cross-functionally to implement and manage cross cutting initiatives.

• Clear, effective written and oral communication.

• Willingness and ability to adapt to rapid business and organizational change.

Salary – up to £60,000

• 30 days annual leave, pro rata (plus 3 concessionary days over Christmas and your bank holidays!)

• Flexibility – UCAS positively supports Hybrid working for its employees, meaning you can work between home and the office in a way that suits you and the business and also has a comprehensive Flexible Working Policy

• A generous pension scheme

• Hundreds of high street discounts and offers with Perkbox

• Internal training and development

• Subsidised gym and café

• Be rewarded for going above and beyond with our ex-gratia bonus scheme and Celebrating U, our quarterly employee recognition scheme