Director, FinOps (Cloud Financial Management) in Toronto

This leadership position is responsible for building and maturing an enterprise FinOps program focused on sustainable cloud cost optimization while maintaining reliability, security, and engineering productivity. The role combines strategic ownership with hands-on execution across analysis, reporting, optimization tracking, governance, and follow-up. The Director will lead the FinOps strategy, operating model, cost optimization pipeline, forecasting discipline, governance cadence, and savings targets. This work will be carried out in close partnership with Engineering, Cloud Operations, Product, Finance, and senior leadership. The role requires the ability to influence both technical and business stakeholders, establish cost accountability, and promote cost-aware decision-making across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the enterprise FinOps strategy, operating model, and governance framework across Azure and platform services.
• Build and manage a cloud cost optimization pipeline covering opportunity identification, impact analysis, prioritization, execution, savings validation, and regression prevention.
• Lead quarterly and annual cloud savings targets using clear methods for hard savings, unit-cost improvement, and cost avoidance.
• Identify cloud cost drivers and convert findings into measurable optimization initiatives.
• Establish ownership and accountability for cloud costs across teams.
• Lead cloud budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and scenario planning.
• Develop showback/chargeback practices and cost-allocation methodologies.
• Define and track unit economics such as cost per customer, transaction, environment, or deployment.
• Improve financial discipline through tagging standards, allocation accuracy, commitment planning, anomaly detection, and benefits tracking.
• Build business cases and assess ROI and financial impact for optimization initiatives.
• Establish baselines and methodologies for measuring and reporting realized savings.
• Partner with Engineering and Cloud Operations to incorporate cost considerations into architecture reviews, backlog prioritization, release planning, and operational decisions.
• Drive optimization across Azure compute and infrastructure, AKS/Kubernetes, rightsizing, scheduling, storage tiering, networking, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and observability/monitoring costs.
• Translate technical and infrastructure decisions into financial impact and cost-to-serve implications.
• Establish practical cost-efficiency policies and guardrails aligned with engineering delivery.
• Support Infrastructure as Code and GitOps practices where appropriate.
• Implement and mature cloud cost visibility, reporting, dashboards, alerts, and automation using Azure-native tooling and/or FinOps platforms.
• Develop anomaly detection, automated cleanup, cost monitoring, and optimization-tracking processes.
• Establish cost observability practices across Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights.
• Improve the quality and availability of cloud cost data used for decision-making.
• Own the FinOps governance cadence, including analysis, tracking, follow-up, and optimization reviews.
• Develop executive reporting on cost drivers, risks, savings progress, forecasts, KPIs, and recommendations.
• Provide clear recommendations and trade-offs to senior leadership.
• Lead and mentor a small FinOps team or function, with potential for future growth.
• Establish team goals, operating cadence, accountability, and continuous-improvement practices.
• Build training and enablement initiatives to improve FinOps awareness and cloud cost literacy across technical and product teams.

Required Skills

• 10+ years of experience in cloud/platform technology, finance/FP&A, technology operations, FinOps, or a closely related discipline.
• 3+ years of leadership experience at Director, Head, Lead, or an equivalent level.
• Experience building, leading, or materially contributing to FinOps or Cloud Financial Management programs.
• Proven record of delivering measurable cloud savings across multiple quarters and improving cost-to-serve.
• Strong experience with Azure cloud economics, cost drivers, and optimization.
• Solid technical understanding of Azure architecture, including compute, AKS/Kubernetes, storage, networking, and observability.
• Strong financial expertise in budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, scenario planning, business casing, ROI, and savings measurement.
• Experience with cloud cost allocation, tagging, showback/chargeback, and/or unit-cost models.
• Ability to translate complex technical decisions into financial impact and actionable recommendations.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to identify true cost drivers and measure optimization outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to influence Engineering, Finance, Product, and Cloud teams without relying solely on direct authority.
• Strong hands-on capability in analysis, tracking, reporting, optimization follow-up, and governance.
• Executive-level written and verbal communication skills, including KPI reporting, recommendations, decision support, and senior stakeholder presentations.
• Ability to operate effectively in an environment requiring structure, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Preferred Skills

• FinOps Foundation certification, Practitioner and/or Professional.
• Relevant Microsoft Azure certifications.
• Experience implementing showback/chargeback and unit-cost models at scale.
• Experience working in Infrastructure as Code and GitOps environments.
• Experience integrating cloud cost controls and governance into engineering and delivery pipelines.

Benefits

• Hybrid work model with a minimum of 3 onsite days per week in Toronto.
• Permanent, full-time employment.

Why You Might Be Interested

This role offers the opportunity to lead an enterprise FinOps function with direct influence on cloud spending, governance, and financial discipline. It combines strategic ownership with hands-on work across analysis, reporting, and optimization execution. The position also provides exposure to senior leadership and close collaboration with Engineering, Cloud Operations, Product, and Finance. For candidates who want to shape cloud cost accountability at scale, it represents a highly visible and impactful mandate.