Finops Lead (azure & AWS)

Finops Lead

KONE Technology and Innovation Unit (KTI) is where we combine the physical world – escalators and elevators – with smart and connected digital systems. We are changing and improving the way billions of people move within buildings every day. We are on a mission to expand and develop new digital solutions that are based on emerging technologies.

The FinOps Lead owns and scales KONE IT's cloud financial management across Azure and AWS, delivering real-time visibility, predictable budgeting & forecasting, and value-focused optimization. The role bridges Finance, Platform engineering, Product teams, and Procurement, embedding cost and sustainability accountability into the product lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Governance

• Define and maintain the FinOps related frameworks, policies, guardrails, tagging standards, and KPIs across Azure and AWS; align with KONE IT governance.
• Establish showback/chargeback models and cost allocation practices; set savings baselines, thresholds, and escalation paths.
• Run the FinOps operating model: monthly executive governance, weekly optimization workstreams, decision logs, and action trackers.

Financial Management

• Lead annual cloud budgeting and forecasting; monitor actuals vs. baseline and explain variances.
• Track and improve RI/Savings Plans coverage; manage expiries and purchase windows with Procurement.

Optimization Leadership

• Drive rightsizing, commitment management (RIs/Savings Plans), storage tiering, egress optimization, and architectural cost tradeoffs with Architects, Technical Design Leads and Product Owners.
• Implement anomaly detection and remediation playbooks; prioritize workloads by business value and unit economics.

Reporting & Insights

• Deliver real-time dashboards and executive packs: cost trends, forecast accuracy, savings realization, RI/SP coverage, unit costs.
• Provide granular showback at application/product/team levels; publish monthly KPIs and recommendations.

Stakeholder Engagement & Enablement

• Run enablement for Application Management and product teams on cloud cost best practices and shift-left discipline.
• Align with Product Owners, Operations Leads, DevOps Engineers, and Technical Design Leads to embed FinOps into ways of working.

Sustainability Integration

• Integrate emissions tracking with cost dashboards; guide teams to optimize for cost and carbon together.

AI & Agentic AI for FinOps

Vision

Evolve FinOps to benefit from AI-assisted and agentic operations, where autonomous agents augment teams with real-time insights, proactive anomaly detection, and closed-loop optimization actions across Azure and AWS—aligned with KONE's AI policies.

AI/Agentic Responsibilities

• AI-enabled visibility & analytics: maintain cost telemetry pipelines, AI analytics for spend/forecast/coverage, and explainable executive dashboards.
• Autonomous anomaly management: integrate AWS Cost Anomaly Detection and Azure equivalents; build agent playbooks to triage, root-cause, and trigger corrective actions with approvals and audits.
• Tagging & cost-allocation enforcement: policy agents to auto-validate tags, block non-compliant resources, and remediate mis-tagged assets.
• Commitment optimization via AI: forecasting agents to simulate purchase windows/expiries and recommend RI/SP actions with risk controls.
• Sustainability + cost co-optimization: include emissions metrics alongside € in agent objectives.
• Guardrails & safe operations: human-in-the-loop approvals, rollback paths, logs, and adherence to KONE AI ground rules.

Outcomes & KPIs

• Savings realization: % reduction of avoidable spend; annual incremental savings vs. baseline.
• Forecast accuracy: variance vs. budget (monthly/quarterly).
• Commitment coverage: % of eligible spend under RI/Savings Plans; expiry risk minimized.
• Visibility & allocation: % of spend with complete tags and cost allocation coverage; showback adoption.
• Optimization cadence: remediation actions closed/month; anomaly MTTR.
• Sustainability KPIs: inclusion of emissions indicators in dashboards and optimization decisions.

Qualifications

Must-have

• 6+ years in cloud financial management/technology finance/cloud operations with hands-on Azure and AWS cost models and governance.
• Proven success building/maturing a FinOps practice (showback/chargeback, forecasting, optimization at scale).
• Strong collaboration with Finance, Procurement, Platform/Operations, and Product; ability to translate business drivers into unit economics.
• Proficiency with Azure Cost Management, AWS Cost Explorer, IAC, tagging and anomaly tooling, and executive dashboards.
• Experience with AI/agentic AI concepts.
• Familiarity with ITIL, DevOps, SIAM, and agile frameworks.
• FinOps Foundation certification or equivalent.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with RI/SP marketplaces and enterprise agreements.
• Experience integrating sustainability/carbon metrics with cost optimization.

Ways of Working

• Operate within KONE IT's platform governance and product operating model; monthly governance and weekly optimization workstreams.
• Maintain action & recommendation trackers; publish stakeholder communications; ensure auditability of AI/agent actions.

Reporting Line

Reports to: Platform Manager, DC & Cloud platforms; works closely with Finance, Procurement, Operations Leads, Product Owners, and Technical Design Leads.

For further information, please contact Eero Lindfors, Platform Manager, DC & Cloud via email.

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