Technical Cost Analyst

DigiCert•Herndon, VA

20h

About The Position

The Technology Cost Analyst will work with a wide range of stakeholders to promote a culture of cost accountability and awareness for company's cloud consumption and contractual expense. Key areas the role will support include financial modeling, budgeting and forecasting, consumption analysis and KPIs, analytics, and capacity management.

Requirements

BS/BA degree required in Finance, Accounting, Economics or other technical discipline.
5-7+ years of experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
3+ years of relevant work experience at a large multi-million dollar cloud environment.
Demonstrated experience proactively driving and delivering high value/high-impact project results through both individual and team efforts.
Thorough and detail oriented, yet able to see the forest for the trees.
Ability to deal with ambiguity across a continuously evolving, fast-paced business.
High level of self-motivation and autonomy; ability to quickly identify what needs to be accomplished and resourcefulness to get things done.
Demonstrated ability to influence decisions through effective verbal and written communication, logical reasoning and the presentation of alternatives
Strong track record of earning trust with business partners and driving cross-organization changes.
Proven ability to meet tight deadlines and prioritize workload in an ambiguous environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with 3rd party cloud cost reporting and optimization tools (Cloudaware and Cloudability).
Understanding of database and big data management capabilities and constraints (RDBMS, NoSQL, Data lake, etc).
Possess an AWS Practitioner certification or ability to attain within 12 months.
Has aptitude to learn and understand new concepts and technologies to become an expert in the field.
Strong partnering capabilities, with the ability to influence others without direct authority.
Executive level oral and written communication skills; ability to communicate complex analysis in a clear, simple way.
Understanding of applications development environments, database, data management and infrastructure capabilities and constraints.
Familiarity with cost structure of AWS, Azure, and Google products and services.
Experience in IT Business Analytics, Project Management, IT Finance.
Experience in cloud expense management using the FinOps /Cloud spend optimization discipline.

Responsibilities

Manage inventory and make recommendations for AWS Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
Drive the financial evaluation of Cloud related engineering investments, partnerships, and procurements.
Engage in continuous learning of Amazon Cloud services, infrastructure, operations, go-to-market, and long-term cloud economics.
Support stakeholders in understanding their cloud spend based on their business roadmap and budgeted forecast.
Support annual budget and quarterly forecast process for enterprise-wide cloud spend, including planning for and managing commitment-based AWS savings and discount programs.
Monitor cloud consumption at the account level to detect, investigate, and escalate anomalies and unplanned spikes.
Manage vendor relationship with AWS and relevant 3 rd party tools.
Design, develop, and maintain reports and KPIs that provide detailed usage statistics of resources across the multi cloud and multi-consultancy landscape.
Participate in business case development, cost modeling, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and trade-off exercises.
Provide cost optimization recommendations.
Create and maintain month-end and quarter-end reports.
Facilitate IT Procurement process by maintaining an inventory and working with stakeholders for on-time renewals.
Produce insightful reports that can be shared with and actioned by Management.
Provide guidance to developers and application owners on best practices for reducing costs and optimizing consumption of cloud services.
Manage and support cloud governance program (i.e., Cloud resource tagging policies and enforcement).
Own and drive improvement projects during planning and forecasting cycles.
Drive creation of complex financial models and analytical tools to measure overall financial performance.
Own and deliver on ad-hoc business support projects.
Develop, track, and report relevant KPIs to shed financial and operational insights into the business.
Prepare, in partnership with Finance, the annual budget - Hardware, Software, Labor.
Create models and forecasts to help decide the impacts and implications of various expense scenarios (e.g. timing of purchases, adds/deducts, self-funds).
Self-starter who can also work with multiple internal teams to provide the best experience for our customers.
Knowledge of financial principles and business analytics.
Strong analytical background with an aptitude for understanding technology.
Experience with advanced Excel functions required.
Knowledge of the core Finance principles and basic understanding of the corporate accounting process (forecast, invoicing, chargeback, accruals, etc.).
Experience working closely with external IT vendors.
Experience in cost management and optimization strategies such as enterprise-wide discount programs and commitment -based discount plans (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot, Sustained Use/Committed Use Discounts , AWS Enterprise Discount and Private Pricing program(s)).
Experience with AWS 3rd party cloud cost transparency & optimization tools
Familiarity with AWS invoicing process, Accounts Payable process, etc.
General understanding of AWS Organizations and Consolidated Billing functions and features.
Familiarity with AWS Marketplace structure , offerings, and purpose.