Sr. Systems Engineer – Cloud Finops & Automation

Sr. Systems Engineer FinOps

The Sr. Systems Engineer FinOps will be a technical expert responsible for driving measurable savings and financial accountability across public cloud platforms by engineering automation for tagging compliance, budget & anomaly guardrails, and workload optimization. The role will partner with Cloud Platform, Application, DevOPs, Security, and Finance teams to deliver cost transparency (chargeback/showback), enforce governance via policy-as-code, and implement hands-off automation that continuously reduces spend without sacrificing reliability or security. Grounded in established FinOps scope and tooling including centralized dashboards and policy enforcements, this role will collaborate with teams to ensure that cloud-based applications are designed with cost efficiency in mind. The role will implement an operating model of innovative cost savings and optimization solutions for Marriott across all public cloud providers.

Candidate Profile

Education and Experience Required:

• Undergraduate degree in an engineering or computer science discipline and/or equivalent experience/certification
• 7+ years experience in information technology including:
• 5+ years' experience in Cloud technologies including Iaas/Paas/Saas deployments on Public Cloud (AWS, AliCloud, Azure).
• 3+ years of experience in developing and implementing FinOps/Cloud Cost Optimization strategies for AWS services.
• 3+ years of experience in OS scripting and automation (e.g. Python, Bash)
• Experience with FinOps/Cloud Cost Management tools and be comfortable with data analysis and reporting
• Proven analytical skills and experience with cost optimization
• Experience managing multi-million-dollar accounts
• Deep understanding with cloud costs and the various alternatives
• Proven ability to drive efficiencies and cost savings with savings and cost optimization mindset

Preferred:

• 2+ years of experience in administering and implementing automation in public Cloud infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible following Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts.
• 2+ years of experience in container operations (such as Docker, OpenShift Enterprise, GKE, ECS) and orchestration (such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes).
• Experience in designing, analyzing, and engineering large-scale distributed systems.
• Demonstrated experience delivering technology solutions in a fast-paced, deadline driven enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated experience learning and applying new technologies to solve business needs.
• Excellent problem-solving skills by working independently and through leading outcomes for cross functional teams.
• Experience across many of the following platforms:
• Operating Systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, Windows, CentOS
• Storage: Block Storage, Object Storage, Lifecycle Management and Data Replication, Backup & Recovery Best Practices.
• Security: Compliance, Information Assurance, Data Protection using industry-best practices and tooling (Crowdstrike Falcon, Tenable.io, Splunk Phantom, HashiCorp Vault signers, SHA1 and SHA2 certificate management).
• Database: Relational (Oracle, DB2, MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL Server), non-relational (Cassandra, Couchbase, MongoDB, DocumentDB).
• Strong knowledge of emerging tools, software, applications, and systems for attaining best-in-class IT across the enterprise.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills for a wide range of audiences including executives, business stakeholders and IT teams.
• Understanding of automated ITCM/ITRM best practices.

Core Work Activities

Key responsibilities include:

• Analyzing cloud usage - Monitoring cloud usage patterns, resource utilization, and spending to identify areas for improvement.
• Optimizing costs - Analyzing, optimizing, and implementing cost optimization actions across different cloud services.
• Automating tools - Implementing and managing automated tools to help identify cost trends and anomalies.
• Creating dashboards - Creating financial and usage dashboards.
• Collaborating with teams - Working with finance and business teams to align cloud spending with budgetary constraints.
• Providing technical leadership, oversight, governance and direction for services related to Marriott solution delivery.
• Providing technical expertise to project team for successful project and change implementations.
• Determining customer requirements and works with sourced resources to develop solutions.
• Leads analysis of current environment for deficiencies and provides solutions.
• Provides input into lifecycle, improvement, and standardization strategies.
• Develops and generates periodic utilization reports to provide visibility to performance, capacity, availability and SLA management.
• Utilize capacity data to model future state planning with overall strategy and goals.
• Provides and presents status, analysis and reporting to internal stakeholders, Executive Management and Senior Leadership.
• Trains and/or mentors other team members, and peers as appropriate.
• Develop implementation plans, test plans, and timelines for projects and tasks.
• Responsible for project inception including requirements gathering and architecting, costs and chargeback modeling, infrastructure-as-code development and configuration management.
• Work with Enterprise Architecture to provide technology and cloud native service governance for technology steering committees, with cost and support directives.

Delivering Technology

Create and enhance administrative, operational and technical policies and procedures, adopting best practice guidelines, standards and procedures for employees, contractors and vendor engagements. Maintains a proper balance between business and operational risk. Interfaces with stakeholders to establish requirements and formulate priorities for infrastructure projects. Leads/assists in configuration management. Works in a concerted effort with application development and engineering teams to resolve complex issues. Provides oversight, collaboration, provisioning, management and maintenance of technology products and service alternatives that improve the production services environment. Responsible for the establishment and continuous development of monitoring and alerting for all production environments. Develops internal processes and training to ensure team members have the needed skills and tools to support the production environments and deliver on project commitments. Performs complex quantitative and qualitative analyses for operational availability to promote a zero-defect environment. Facilitates achievement of expected deliverables and obligations of Services Providers. Leads/assists operational teams in system updates & upgrades. Provides consultation for routine and complex systems development. Ensures early warning to the business stakeholder executives regarding degraded or missed service levels. Coordinates with Plan and Build teams for deployment and production support activities.

IT Governance

Follows all defined IT standards and processes (i.e. IT Governance, SM&G, Architecture, etc.), and provides input for improvements to the appropriate process owners as needed. Execute infrastructure compliance monitors and auditing to ensure user and password security. Maintains a proper balance between business and operational risk. Follows the defined project management standards and processes.

Service Provider Management

Ensures proper coordination with appropriate IT and vendor relations teams. Manages Service Providers with a focus on continuous service improvement and service evolution. Monitors, manages and leads Service Provider outcomes required to ensure operational availability and a zero-defect production environment. Consults with internal Service Management & external Service Providers on performance, business reporting, analytics metrics and business value dashboards.

At Marriott International, we are dedicated to being an equal opportunity employer, welcoming all and providing access to opportunity. We actively foster an environment where the unique backgrounds of our associates are valued and celebrated. Our greatest strength lies in the rich blend of culture, talent, and experiences of our associates. We are committed to non-discrimination on any protected basis, including disability, veteran status, or other basis protected by applicable law.

All positions offer a 401(k) plan, stock purchase plan, discounts at Marriott properties, commuter benefits, employee assistance plan, and childcare discounts. Benefits are subject to terms and conditions, which may include rules regarding eligibility, enrollment, waiting period, contribution, benefit limits, election changes, benefit exclusions, and others. Click here to learn more.

Full-time positions also offer coverage for medical, dental, vision, health care flexible spending account, dependent care flexible spending account, life insurance, disability insurance, accident insurance, adoption expense reimbursements, paid parental leave and educational assistance.

Washington Applicants Only: Employees will accrue paid sick leave, 0.077 PTO balance for every hour worked and be eligible to receive a minimum of 9 holidays annually. Marriott HQ is committed to a hybrid work environment that enables associates to Be connected. Headquarters-based positions are considered hybrid, for candidates within a commuting distance to Bethesda, MD; candidates outside of commuting distance to Bethesda, MD will be considered for Remote positions. Marriott International is the world's largest