Senior Staff Cloud FinOps Analyst

FinOps Weekly; Santa Clara, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 166,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (when applicable)

Health plans

401(k) plan with company match

Flexible spending accounts

ESP P

Employee assistance programs

Job summary

ServiceNow seeks a Senior Staff Cloud FinOps Analyst to lead cloud cost optimization across AWS, Azure, GCP, and private infra. You will partner with Engineering, Finance, Product, and Procurement to improve efficiency, unit economics, and gross margin.

The role supports AI-powered FinOps tooling, builds analytical models, and defines practitioner experiences for cloud cost analysis and planning. You will mentor practitioners and drive cross-functional initiatives.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree, or 8+ years with a Master’s degree, or a PhD with 5+ years of experience.
• Experience applying AI to work processes, decision-making, problem-solving, automation, or analytical workflows.
• Extensive experience in FinOps, cloud economics, infrastructure analytics, or technology-finance.
• Strong pricing knowledge across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
• Advanced SQL skills.
• Strong forecasting skills.
• Strong financial modeling skills.
• Demonstrated expertise in rate optimization, rightsizing, savings validation, and cloud unit economics.

Responsibilities

• Lead cloud ownership governance and escalation processes.
• Collaborate with engineering to strengthen tagging, owner assignment, and cost-signal routing.
• Track compliance with ownership standards and close spend gaps.
• Develop multi-cloud rate optimization strategies across providers.
• Manage Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and capacity reservations.
• Analyze forecasts, pricing terms, workload demand, and break-even risk.
• Build scenarios to quantify savings and forecast sensitivity.
• Partner with Finance, Procurement, Engineering, and providers to manage commitments.
• Create an optimization pipeline for rate, usage, and efficiency.
• Measure savings and validate against billing data.
• Produce executive scorecards on opportunity value and progress.
• Contribute to AI-powered FinOps tooling and practitioner experiences.
• Develop data models and analytics with cross-functional teams.
• Support multi-cloud showback, planning, and unit economics.

Skills

AI in workflows

FinOps

Cloud economics

SQL

Forecasting

Financial modeling

Rate optimization

Rightsizing

Cloud unit economics

Pricing knowledge

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

PhD

Tools

Showback tools

Data analytics platforms

Job description

## Job Description## About the RoleServiceNow is hiring a Senior Staff Cloud FinOps Analyst to lead cloud financial optimization across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, private infrastructure, and emerging AI services. The role sits at the intersection of Engineering, Finance, Product, Capacity Planning, Procurement, and cloud providers, with a focus on improving infrastructure efficiency, unit economics, commitment performance, and gross margin.This position is intended to go beyond standard cloud reporting. It requires turning complex cost and usage data into practical actions that improve financial accountability, support decision-making, and strengthen optimization outcomes across the enterprise.The role also contributes to ServiceNow’s AI-powered FinOps Control Tower by helping define analytical models, practitioner workflows, and AI-assisted capabilities for cloud cost analysis and planning.## Key Responsibilities– Lead governance models for cloud ownership, allocation, accountability, and escalation. – Partner with engineering teams to strengthen tagging, owner assignment, budget alerts, and cost-signal routing. – Track compliance with ownership and allocation standards and close gaps where spend is unowned or misattributed. – Develop and improve multi-cloud rate optimization strategies across major cloud providers. – Manage Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Committed Use Discounts, capacity reservations, and similar pricing instruments. – Analyze forecasts, pricing terms, workload demand, coverage, utilization, expiration, break-even position, and stranded commitment risk. – Build scenarios that quantify savings, financial exposure, and forecast sensitivity. – Partner with Finance, Procurement, Engineering, and cloud providers to manage commitment portfolios. – Build and manage an optimization pipeline covering rate, usage, waste, architecture, and operational efficiency. – Measure identified, accepted, implemented, and realized savings using consistent methodologies. – Validate savings against billing and usage data. – Create executive scorecards covering opportunity value, ownership, implementation progress, realized savings, and residual risk. – Contribute to the design of AI-powered FinOps tooling and user experiences. – Define requirements, analytical models, semantic definitions, and practitioner experiences with Data Engineering, FinOps Engineering, Business Intelligence, and Product teams. – Help develop AI-assisted capabilities for anomaly detection, forecasting, variance explanations, commitment analysis, optimization recommendations, and natural-language exploration of cost and usage data. – Support conformed multi-cloud datasets and interactive applications for showback, optimization, planning, executive reporting, and unit economics. – Develop allocation and unit-economic models and improve ownership visibility and financial accountability. – Advise senior Engineering, Finance, Product, and Infrastructure leaders. – Lead cross-functional initiatives, mentor FinOps practitioners, and present analytical findings as clear executive recommendations.## Required Skills– 12+ years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or 8+ years with a Master’s degree, or a PhD with 5+ years of experience, or equivalent experience. – Experience applying AI to work processes, decision-making, problem-solving, automation, or analytical workflows. – Extensive experience in FinOps, cloud economics, infrastructure analytics, or technology-finance. – Strong pricing knowledge across AWS, Azure, and GCP. – Advanced SQL skills. – Strong forecasting skills. – Strong financial modeling skills. – Demonstrated expertise in rate optimization, rightsizing, savings validation, and cloud unit economics.## Preferred Skills– Experience building internal data products. – Experience applying AI to analytical workflows.## Cloud Platforms & Technologies### Cloud Providers – AWS – Microsoft Azure – Google Cloud Platform – Private infrastructure### FinOps Platforms / Concepts – Reserved Instances – Savings Plans – Committed Use Discounts – Capacity reservations – Showback – Cost & Usage data – Unit economics### Programming Languages / Query – SQL### Data, Analytics, and AI – AI-powered tooling – AI-assisted capabilities – Anomaly detection – Forecasting – Variance analysis – Commitment analysis – Optimization recommendations – Natural-language exploration – Semantic definitions – Analytical models – Internal data products### Collaboration Areas – Data Engineering – FinOps Engineering – Business Intelligence – Product – Engineering – Finance – Procurement – Capacity Planning – Infrastructure## FinOps Responsibilities– Establish and maintain cloud governance, ownership, and allocation standards. – Improve tagging, allocation enforcement, owner assignment, and cost accountability. – Build budget and threshold alerting processes. – Develop and manage rate optimization strategies across multiple clouds. – Manage commitment-based purchasing and assess utilization, break-even, and stranded risk. – Build savings pipelines and track savings from identification through realization. – Validate optimization results using billing and usage data. – Create executive reporting and scorecards for cloud financial performance. – Develop allocation and unit-economic models. – Improve cloud spend visibility and financial accountability. – Support showback, planning, executive reporting, and unit economics through data products and applications.## Benefits– Base pay of $165,500 to $289,600. – Equity, when applicable. – Variable or incentive compensation. – Health plans. – Flexible spending accounts. – 401(k) plan with company match. – ESPP. – Matching donations. – Flexible time away plan. – Family leave programs.## Why You Might Be InterestedThis role offers the opportunity to lead enterprise-scale FinOps work across multiple cloud platforms and private infrastructure. It combines financial analysis, cloud economics, governance, and AI-enabled tooling in a highly cross-functional environment. The position also includes direct influence on executive decision-making, optimization strategy, and the development of internal analytics capabilities.