Senior Engineer – AWS (FinOps)

Key Responsibilities

Cost Visibility & Allocation

Maintain and enhance cost allocation and chargeback models, budgets, and cost alerts across cloud accounts.

Implement and enforce tagging and resource-hierarchy standards, ensuring greater than 90% coverage for cost-critical tags (app, environment, owner, cost center).

Develop and publish cost-visibility dashboards and reports using Power BI, native cloud tooling, or third-party FinOps platforms.

Support unified multi-cloud cost reporting to ensure transparency for engineering and finance teams.

Optimization & Engineering

Execute rightsizing and scheduling of cloud resources across AWS and Azure (EC2, RDS, S3, VMs, App Services, Storage, Networking).

Manage and optimize Reservations (RIs), Savings Plans, and Hybrid Benefits (AWS BYOL / Azure Hybrid Benefit).

Assist in implementing policy-as-code using AWS Config, Azure Policy, Terraform, or Bicep, under senior guidance.

Participate in anomaly detection, spend forecasting, and automated remediation workflows.

Contribute to CI/CD pipeline management, infrastructure automation, and GitOps practices using GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps.

Operate & Partner

Provide actionable input during monthly cost and performance reviews with product and engineering stakeholders.

Partner with Finance and Procurement teams on budgeting, forecasting, and billing validation.

Collaborate with SRE and Platform teams to balance cost efficiency, reliability, and security.

Maintain operational hygiene through scripting, tagging audits, and compliance automation.

Core Technology Stack

Cost & Governance

AWS: Cost Explorer, Budgets, Config, Organizations, Management Groups.

Azure: Cost Management + Billing, Advisor, Policy.

GCP: Billing Reports.

FinOps Platforms: Apptio Cloudability, CloudHealth, Kubecost, Harness CCM.

Observability & Data

AWS CloudWatch.

Azure Monitor and Log Analytics.

Power BI.

Amazon QuickSight.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

Terraform, Bicep, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible.

Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, GitLab.

AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, PowerShell, Python.

Cloud Services Exposure

AWS: EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, EKS (basics), CloudTrail, CloudWatch.

Azure: VMs, App Services, Storage, Azure SQL, AKS, Databricks (basics).

GCP: Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Functions, GKE.

Nice-to-Have Tools

Apptio Cloudability, VMware Aria/CloudHealth, Kubecost, custom FinOps dashboards.

Qualifications

● Minimum 5+ years in a customer-facing technical role.

● Minimum 3+ years designing, securing, and deploying large-scale cloud applications and solutions.

● Experience in Cloud Engineering, Platform Operations, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), including 1–2 years of FinOps or cloud cost optimization (AWS preferred).

● Strong experience with AWS and Azure cost management, including tagging, cost allocation, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting.

● Knowledge of Reserved Instances (RIs), Savings Plans, rightsizing, utilization optimization, and cloud cost governance.

● Experience with Power BI, Kusto Query Language (KQL), Amazon CloudWatch, Python, and PowerShell.

● Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Bicep).

● Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps, and infrastructure automation.

● Architect-level development skills in Python, PowerShell, Java, or similar programming languages.

● Subject Matter Expert (SME) in at least one cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform).

● Strong networking knowledge, including VPCs/VNets, Subnets, Route Tables, Security Groups/NSGs, Load Balancers, VPNs, Network Connectivity, and Routing.

● Strong Terraform development and modular infrastructure design experience.

● Experience with AWS services including Lambda, API Gateway, ECS, EKS, and other AWS native services.

● Experience with multi-account AWS environments including AWS Organizations, Control Tower, Service Control Policies (SCPs), Landing Zones, Account Vending, Baseline Configurations, and Guardrails.

● Experience with DevOps platforms including Bitbucket (preferred), GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps Pipelines, and GitLab CI/CD.

● Experience with security and governance tools including Cloud Custodian, Trivy, SAST/DAST tools, Pre-commit Hooks, and other DevSecOps tools.

● Experience with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and remediation workflows.

● Experience with secrets management solutions including AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or equivalent.

● Experience with monitoring and observability tools including Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, or similar platforms.

● Experience with container security and image scanning for Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

● Experience working in regulated environments including HIPAA, SOC 2, HITRUST, or equivalent compliance frameworks.

● Understanding of cloud data governance, data classification, and data protection.

● Experience implementing cloud compliance, audit controls, and governance standards.

● Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.

● Strong project management, organizational, and communication skills.

● Self-motivated, well-organized, able to manage multiple priorities, and willing to travel as required.

Performance Expectations

Top Expectations for a Senior Engineer

● Execute tagging, cost optimization, and reporting activities under senior guidance.

● Maintain accurate dashboards and deliver actionable insights to stakeholders.

● Assist in implementing policy-as-code, automation scripts, and cost-saving recommendations.

● Increase cost awareness among engineering teams and help embed FinOps principles.

● Create and maintain standard operating procedures and playbooks for recurring tasks.

● Demonstrate proven skills across multiple billable technologies, validated through certification, training, or demonstrated ability.

● Serve as a recognized subject-matter expert within your professional discipline.

● Contribute to more complex and critical environments, often exceeding the expectations of your current job title.

Lead vs. Contribute

● Participate in and help lead a team of technical delivery resources across skill sets to achieve customer business and technology goals.

● Participate in and lead written deliverable creation across areas of expertise.

● Provide measurable input into AHEAD's products, processes, standards, and plans.

● Provide time estimates for work based on available information.