WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
- Dashboards/Transparency (may not be needed with Nimbus)
- UX design, requirements definitions, wireframe skills, data analysis, SQL/Tableau/PowerBI, etc., and potentially Python/R for AI/ML capabilities
- (may not be needed if Nimbus can provide all of this functionality and works as needed)
- Strategy, Roadmaps, and Optimization Opportunities (Architect/Engineer)
- Enterprise and Solution Architecture, ability to understand end-to-end technical environment, resources to support, and process optimization
- Able to define efficiency cost savings with vague or loosely defined variables (e.g., time to market, time to deliver, improved sprint efficiency ratios, etc.)
- Solid understanding key drivers, concepts, and language that technology, finance, regulatory, governance, procurement, and service management teams use day-to-day
- Project management skills to track progress of optimization efforts and outcomes, align and build business case to fund resource/effort (example: refactoring an application may require $100K to gain $500K in optimization benefits as a result of containerization and refactoring using microservices; representative numbers)
- Financial / Product / Revenue
- Able to understand corporate accounting and finance terminology and concepts (e.g. CAGR, COGS, capex vs. opex, allocations, cost centers)
- Able to identify (through orgs/subscriptions, hostnames, tags, or lookup values) the level of granularity required to provide appropriate reporting and data analysis
- Able to effectively determine total expenses compared with revenue by product to ensure profit/margins for cloud-based products (senior/product role)
- Able to review the cloud spend reports (cost and usage (CUR) file)) to summarize, identify anomalies, benchmarks and alerts respective to product and customer usage
- Communications / Marketing (optional)
- Some organizations need a resource to understand the importance of FinOps, and help market the successes (e.g., FinOps Friday newsletter)
- Able to educate the organization to change the culture from legacy data center to cloud native (different ways of working and thinking about assets/resources)
- Able to present globally, and to executive audiences
As a general rule, and looking for a Cloud FinOps Engineer role, I would include the following:
Primary Responsibilities
- Lead the FinOps CCoE, including definition, management and communication of cloud governance, policies and alerts
- Provide FinOps expertise and direction to IT leadership, project management, engineering, and operations teams
- Able to understand and clearly communicate complex engineering, regulatory, and financial data into a consolidated and clear format for all audiences
- Partner with respective stakeholders to design FinOps dashboards, identify optimization opportunities, and track success of optimization efforts
- Able to analyze cloud utilization and usage reports to develop resource right-sizing, budget forecasts and subsequent reconciliation, including RI/CUD cost savings strategies
Key Skills / Qualifications / Knowledge
- Strong experience to architect, design, and implement cloud solutions, preferably AWS
- Experience with cost management tools such as CloudHealth, Cloudability, or cloud native tools like CloudWatch (should give an indication they can work with Nimbus or recommend added capabilities required)
- Strong analytical and data analysis skills to gather, analyze and interpret information and process diagrams
- Solid understanding of key drivers, concepts, and language that technology, finance, regulatory, security, procurement, and service management teams use day-to-day
- Formal Education: Bachelor’s Degree in computer engineering or related field