Associate Director - IT Financial Operations

Position Overview:

We are looking for a highly strategic, data-driven, and collaborative Associate Director of IT FinOps to lead our IT financial operations. This leader will play a critical role in managing cloud cost efficiency, financial accountability, and IT budget alignment for cloud operations especially crucial in a SaaS company with Regulatory and pharmaceutical clients where compliance and predictability are paramount.

You will work cross-functionally with Engineering, DevOps and other functions to create a culture of financial accountability in the IT operations, while supporting agility and innovation across RxLogix's technology landscape.

Key Responsibilities:

1. FinOps Strategy & Leadership:

- Define and lead RxLogix's enterprise-wide IT FinOps strategy, aligning cloud spend with business priorities.

- Previous experience building a FinOps function from the ground up in a scaling organization.

- Establish and grow a FinOps function, developing a team to drive continuous improvement.

- Define standard pricing for standard and custom solution architectures.

- Promote a culture of financial accountability in the IT across all the functions.

2. Cloud Cost Optimization & Governance:

- Collaborate with Engineering and DevOps to implement cost optimization best practices across services and architectures.

- Establish and enforce cost governance frameworks, including tagging policies, cost controls, and automation to ensure accuracy and accountability.

- Define standard pricing for both standard and custom solution architectures based on usage patterns and business requirements.

3. AWS Spend Management:

- Own IT billing operations including planning, budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis.

- Monitor planned vs. actual costs to ensure alignment with budgets and business projections.

- Develop and drive accountability and transparency across departments.

4. Forecasting, Reporting & Insights:

- Analyze cost and usage data to produce real-time dashboards and executive reports.

- Analyze actual costs against forecasted models and leverage industry innovations to refine standard architectures and pricing models in collaboration with Engineering.

- Drive continuous improvement by evaluating new AWS and others service providers offerings and tools.

5. Stakeholder Collaboration & Communication:

- Proactively communicate cost increases to engineering Sales, and Client Partner (CP) teams, enabling timely internal and external communication.

- Proactively communicate cost increases to Finance and Sales/CP teams for timely heads up to clients.

- Serve as a key liaison between Engineering, DevOps, other functions and Executive Leadership on the cost management and ensure cloud spending aligns with delivered client value.

- Lead regular cost reviews, planning sessions, and optimization workshops with key stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications and Skills:

- Overall 14+ Years of experience with 10+ years of experience in cloud financial operations, enterprise IT finance, or cloud cost optimization, with at least 3+ years in a senior or director-level leadership role.

- Bachelor's degree in information technology, Finance, Computer Science, or Engineering.

- Preferred: MBA, CPA, or Masters in IT/Finance-related discipline.

- Experience in regulated industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals, healthcare, life sciences) is highly preferred.

- Demonstrated success managing multi-million-dollar AWS environments across complex, regulated infrastructures.

- Deep expertise in AWS billing, pricing models usage reports, and optimization strategies.

- Proven experience with cloud FinOps tools (e.g., AWS Cost Explorer).

- Strong command of budgeting, forecasting, financial modelling, and analytics.

- Experience implementing tagging policies, and cost governance frameworks.

- Exceptional communication and executive reporting skills able to influence at all levels.

- Solid understanding of cloud-native architecture, DevOps practices, and infrastructure-as-code concepts.

Certifications (Preferred):

- FinOps Certified Practitioner or Professional.

- AWS/Azure/GCP Cloud Certifications.

- ITIL Foundation (for understanding service management & chargeback models).