FinOps Cloud Engineer

What You'll Do

We are seeking a skilled engineer to join the Fin Ops team within Information Services, where you’ll play a key role in shaping how Principal’s cloud costs are managed, optimized, and governed across the organization. Upon joining the team, you would be developing and implementing solutions that advance our enterprise-wide Fin Ops strategy—helping Principal optimize cloud financial management, improve cost transparency, and drive smarter decision‑making for teams making technology choices.

Working within an agile environment, our team emphasizes consistent, fully managed deployments. This role provides a unique opportunity to influence both delivery processes and outcomes, while partnering closely with a high‑performing group of infrastructure engineers and technology professionals.

Our team currently focuses on managing and optimizing AWS cloud spend, but we’re actively expanding our scope to include other cloud service providers (CSPs) used at Principal and technologies such as IaaS, SaaS, and vendor‑hosted solutions. This role offers the opportunity to help shape our evolving Fin Ops strategy across a diverse and growing technology landscape.

• Monitor, analyze, and report on cloud spend across platforms (currently this includes AWS & Azure).
• Identify cost‑saving opportunities through rightsizing, scheduling, and purchasing strategies (e.g., Reserved Instances, Savings Plans).
• Build and maintain dashboards and reports to provide visibility into cloud usage and costs.
• Translate complex billing data into actionable insights for engineering, finance, and leadership teams.
• Partner with engineering, finance, procurement, and product teams to align cloud usage with business goals.
• Educate teams on cost‑aware architecture and usage patterns.
• Help define and enforce cloud cost governance policies and tagging standards.
• Support compliance with internal and external financial controls.
• Implement and maintain Fin Ops tooling.
• Automate cost tracking, anomaly detection, and budget alerts.
• Assist in forecasting cloud spend and aligning budgets with usage trends.
• Provide input into financial planning and scenario modeling.
• Contribute to the evolution of the Fin Ops practice by identifying process improvements and scaling strategies.
• Stay current with industry trends and best practices in cloud financial management.
• Participate in vendor negotiations and evaluate pricing models for cloud services.

• Associate's or bachelor's degree (preference in a computer science, technology, engineering or math‑related field) and 3+ years work experience or equivalent experience.
• Strong understanding of AWS, Azure, or GCP billing and pricing models.
• Proficient with Typescript and/or Python.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK/Cloud Formation).
• Familiarity with Fin Ops principles and frameworks.
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Desire and ability to learn new technology and continuously grow.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work cross‑functionally.

• Experience in cloud infrastructure, cloud financial management, or Fin Ops.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.
• Experience with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Quick Sight).
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized workloads on AWS (e.g., EKS).
• Background in finance, accounting, or business analytics.

Salary ranges below reflect targeted base salaries. Non‑sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation for all roles will be based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Salary ranges (Non‑Exempt expressed as hourly; Exempt expressed as yearly): $85,000 - $165,000 / year

• Infrastructure Engineer III: $85,000 - $135,000 / year
• Sr. Infrastructure Engineer I: $118,000 - $165,000 / year

Flexible Time Off (FTO) is…