Finops Engineer Jobs in Cary, NC (NOW HIRING)

Key Responsibilities

Following is a summary of the essential functions for this job. Other duties may be performed, both major and minor, which are not mentioned below. Specific activities may change from time to time.

• Cost Visibility & Allocation: Own the cost allocation model end-to-end across all Azure enrollments - management group hierarchy, subscription strategy, resource group conventions, and the tagging taxonomy that maps spend to cost centers, applications, and business lines - and maintain the subscription-to-showback and resource group override mapping, keeping unallocated cost visible so Finance can trust the numbers.

• Chargeback, Showback & Shared Cost: Design and maintain reporting so every technology and business leader across CRC Group, CRC Specialty, CRC Benefits, Starwind, and TAPCO can see consumption, trend, and variance. Establish defensible splitting methodologies for shared and untaggable costs including multi-tenant clusters, shared data platforms, and Log Analytics ingestion.

• Optimization & Efficiency: Run a continuous optimization pipeline - identify, quantify, prioritize, assign, and verify savings with before/after evidence - targeting idle and orphaned resources, over-provisioned VMs and SQL, storage tiering, and ingestion sprawl; extend the Azure Hybrid Benefit conversion program and partner with cloud operations and platform engineering on right-sizing, autoscaling, spot workloads, and non-production scheduling.

• Commitment & Rate Optimization: Track MACC burn-down and manage the commitment portfolio of Reserved Instances and Azure Savings Plans, maintaining coverage at 70%+ and utilization above 90%; support EA, SCE, MCA, and Microsoft Unified Support renewals and true-ups, and validate reseller or CSP proposals against CRC's current Azure commitment discount.

• Forecasting & Financial Analysis: Produce a rolling 12-18 month Azure forecast at business-line granularity with documented assumptions, model CapEx/OpEx and EBITDA versus non-EBITDA impacts, and explain material variances within five business days, distinguishing growth, waste, rate change, and one-time events.

• Month-End Close & Accounting Partnership: Own the monthly accrual cycle and deliver the approved accrual summary by business day one, validate Microsoft invoices against accruals around the tenth of each month, produce invoice allocation summaries for journal entry, route to Accounts Payable, and reconcile Azure billing data to Workday.

• Executive Reporting: Develop, maintain, and deliver board-ready cost materials, MACC executive tracking, and portfolio dashboards that support decision-making by senior technology, finance, and business leadership.

• Governance & Guardrails: Establish FinOps policies, budgets, alerts, Azure Policy enforcement, and anomaly detection with triage within 24 hours; chair a recurring cloud cost governance forum with Technology Operations, Cloud Platform Engineering, Finance, and Procurement.

• Tooling & Automation: Act as business owner for the FinOps Intelligence Platform and own the tooling stack and data pipeline behind it - FOCUS 1.2 cost exports, Azure Resource Graph, Azure Monitor, Azure Advisor, Databricks, and Power BI - automating recurring analysis and remediation with Python, PowerShell, KQL, and the Microsoft FinOps Toolkit.

• Standards & Best Practices: Advance CRC Group along the FinOps Foundation framework and personas model (Crawl Walk Run), stand up the FinOps education and champions program, and establish templates and standards for cost estimation in architecture review, capacity planning, and project launch readiness.

• Team Leadership & Management: Lead, mentor, and manage (directly or indirectly) FinOps analysts, interns, and offshore partner resources, fostering a culture of excellence and continuous improvement.

Education and Experience

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Finance, Accounting, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in cloud financial management, cloud infrastructure, or technology finance, including at least 3 years hands-on with Azure cost management specifically.

• Demonstrated ownership of an Azure estate of at least $20M in annual spend across multiple enrollments or billing scopes, with quantifiable, evidenced savings delivered.

• Deep working knowledge of Azure commercial constructs: EA/MCA billing hierarchy, enrollment accounts, MACC consumption commitments, SCE, reservations, savings plans, Azure Hybrid Benefit, marketplace charges, and the Azure pricing and billing data model.

• Demonstrated month-end close discipline: accruals, invoice validation, journal entry allocation, and reconciliation to an ERP or general ledger.

• Demonstrated ability to develop and implement processes and procedures.

• Preferred: FinOps Certified Practitioner or FinOps Certified Professional (FinOps Foundation); Microsoft AZ-900, AZ-104, or AZ-305 certification.

• Preferred: M&A and divestiture experience including cost separation, tenant migration modeling, and TSA-period spend tracking; insurance or financial services industry experience.

• Preferred: Background in FP&A, cost accounting, or technology procurement, and exposure to software asset and AI spend management (M365, Copilot, GitHub, Adobe).

Functional Skills

• Strategic Thinking: Ability to connect enterprise objectives to cloud investment decisions and translate consumption data into an actionable multi-year efficiency roadmap.

• Executive Communication: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the range to brief a platform engineer and a CFO in the same week.

• Influence Without Authority: Proven ability to persuade engineering and application teams to act on cost findings they did not request, and to drive those actions to verified closure.

• Analytical Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex billing and operational data and provide actionable insights to leadership.

• Process Development: Expertise in developing and implementing processes, guardrails, and procedures to enhance efficiency and consistency.

• Attention to Detail: High level of attention to detail to ensure accuracy and quality in allocation, accrual, forecast, and invoice reconciliation.

• Collaboration: Strong collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across Technology Operations, Cloud Platform Engineering, Finance, Accounts Payable, Procurement, and vendor partners.

• Continuous Improvement: Passionate about continuous improvement, with a proactive approach to identifying opportunities for optimization and innovation.

Technical Skills

• Expert user of Microsoft Office Suite; especially Excel financial modeling and PowerPoint

• Strong Power BI skills, including comfort working against a governed semantic model rather than report-level logic

• Advanced command of Azure Cost Management + Billing, Azure Advisor, Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, and management group/subscription design

• Working proficiency in at least one of SQL, KQL, Python, or PowerShell for billing data analysis and automation, including the Microsoft FinOps Toolkit and Cost Management APIs

• Experience with FOCUS-format billing data and lakehouse-based cost modeling (Azure Databricks or Fabric)

• Working knowledge of ServiceNow and Workday for asset, contract, purchase order, and invoice reconciliation

• Familiarity with third-party FinOps platforms (Apptio Cloudability, CloudHealth, Finout, Vantage, Harness), Kubernetes cost allocation, and infrastructure-as-code tooling (Terraform, Bicep, Infracost)