Managed Services Operations Lead - FinOps

AHEAD; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

AHEAD seeks a Managed Services Operations Lead, FinOps, to serve as the senior technical authority for cloud financial operations across AWS, Azure, and GCP. The role is performed remotely within the United States with up to 15 percent travel and occasional after-hours support.

You will drive AI-enabled optimization, define data models, and deliver productized, explainable FinOps offerings while mentoring delivery resources and coordinating with executives.

Qualifications

• Strong experience in cloud financial operations and cost optimization.
• Ability to lead complex client engagements and provide technical leadership.
• Excellent communication with executives and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and implementation of FinOps solutions across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
• Own cost visibility, allocation, and optimization across cloud platforms.
• Provide technical leadership without direct management.
• Develop technical roadmaps and delivery standards.
• Engage senior client leadership and sales teams.

Skills

Cloud FinOps

Technical leadership

Cost optimization

Executive communication

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Kubernetes

FinOps tooling

Job description

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD. We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived. We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.

The Managed Services Operations Lead, FinOps is the senior technical authority for AHEAD's Cloud FinOps service, serving as thought leader and subject matter expert for clients, partners, and internal delivery teams. The role leads the development, design, and implementation of FinOps solutions across AWS, Azure, and GCP, and is accountable for the technical quality, consistency, and maturity of FinOps delivery across the managed services client portfolio.

Operating as a principal-level practitioner, this role owns the most complex client scenarios, serves as the primary technical escalation point for Cloud FinOps Engineers, and sets the standards, data models, automation, and reusable assets that the practice delivers against. The role also defines and drives the AI and automation roadmap for the FinOps practice, translating advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities into productized, explainable, and trusted service offerings. This is an individual contributor role that provides technical leadership, mentorship, and coordination across delivery resources without direct personnel-management responsibility.

The role requires a strategic mindset, mature executive communication skills, and commercial awareness, engaging client senior leadership, finance and procurement stakeholders, service and process owners, AHEAD service leadership, and sales teams directly. The role is performed remotely within the United States and includes up to 15 percent domestic travel, along with occasional after-hours or weekend support during major incidents, reporting deadlines, approved change windows, or other activities required by contracted service commitments.

Duties / Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Solution Design

• Serve as the primary technical escalation point for Cloud FinOps Engineers supporting client engagements, resolving the most complex technical and financial analysis scenarios.
• Act as principal engineer for high-complexity client situations requiring advanced cloud engineering, financial modeling, and cross-domain judgment.
• Lead the development, design, and implementation of complex, mission-critical, enterprise-grade FinOps solutions, including AI-enabled capabilities where they deliver measurable client value.
• Ensure FinOps services and deliverables are provided on time and at the highest quality standards while meeting or exceeding client expectations and contracted service commitments.
• Develop and maintain technical roadmaps and innovation plans for supported FinOps solutions and services.
• Establish project estimates and plans, identify risks and mitigations, and oversee the development and delivery of technical FinOps solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and coordinate technical delivery resources across skillsets, including cross-practice work and deliverables, without direct personnel-management responsibility.
• Provide credible time and effort estimates based on available information, and initiate and author project change requests when additional work is identified beyond agreed scope.

Cloud Cost Analysis and Optimization

• Lead deep-dive investigations into cloud spend drivers, billing anomalies, optimization opportunities, and cost visibility gaps across AWS, Azure, and GCP using native tooling and approved third-party FinOps platforms.
• Define the methodology by which the practice identifies, quantifies, prioritizes, and drives optimization opportunities including rightsizing, idle resource cleanup, storage and data transfer optimization, licensing alignment, and scheduling strategies.
• Own the framework for tracking optimization opportunities through identified, recommended, approved, implemented, and realized states, ensuring financial outcomes are validated and unrealized savings are not double-counted or misattributed.
• Set the approach for cost visibility and allocation in containerized and Kubernetes workloads, including shared cluster cost distribution, namespace and label-based allocation, and idle capacity analysis.
• Lead analysis and optimization of AI and GPU-related spend, including accelerated compute utilization, model training and inference costs, and consumption of managed AI and machine learning services.
• Extend cost analysis and governance to SaaS, software licensing, and marketplace spend where these fall within the agreed scope of the engagement.
• Define and oversee best-practices reviews that combine cost analysis with operational excellence analysis, using cloud-native and approved AHEAD tooling.

Allocation, Unit Economics, and Reporting Architecture

• Lead the design and implementation of scalable approaches for cost allocation, tagging strategy, showback, chargeback, budgeting, forecasting, and optimization across Azure, AWS, and GCP.
• Define unit economics and cost-per-unit metric frameworks that tie cloud spend to business drivers such as customers, transactions, environments, products, or workloads.
• Own the architecture of dashboards, reports, budgets, forecasts, executive summaries, and recurring service review content, and set quality standards for what the practice produces.
• Define data validation and reconciliation standards across billing exports, connectors, cost datasets, and reporting models to improve trust in reported values, including adoption of standardized billing data formats such as FOCUS.
• Establish continuous tagging governance through cloud-native policy enforcement, policy-as-code, and automated remediation, refining coverage as untagged or non-compliant resources are identified.
• Set standards for client-facing FinOps tooling and portals, ensuring predictive analytics, multi-account views, and resource, configuration, and environment change reporting remain current and accurate.

Commitment and Rate Strategy

• Own the commitment strategy across the client portfolio, including reserved capacity and savings plan modeling, purchase governance, coverage and utilization targets, expiration and renewal planning, and savings realization tracking.
• Lead support of enterprise agreement, private pricing, and committed-spend discussions by providing consumption analysis, commitment scenarios, and drawdown forecasts to client and AHEAD stakeholders.
• Approve or review commitment recommendations produced by the team before they are presented to clients, ensuring financial assumptions and risk exposure are sound.

Client Advisory, Growth, and Communication

• Build and maintain strong client relationships, drive business growth, and identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling FinOps and adjacent AHEAD services.