Sr. Program Manager, R&D Operations

Category-defining tech. Career-defining work.

Lots of tech companies disrupt. But, many fail when they try to scale. We're different. CockroachDB makes it easier for companies to build and scale apps. This is how and why we're helping some of the most innovative companies on the planet. We tackle problems head-on and focus on solutions that create lasting impact. 

Because when our customers win, we all win. 

The Role

We are seeking a Senior Technical Program Manager, FinOps to join our Research & Development Operations team, based in Bengaluru, India. This is a high-visibility opportunity to define and mature our FinOps capabilities at Cockroach Labs, building on foundational work already underway across our engineering organization and taking our cloud financial management to a new level of rigor, scale, and competitive advantage. You will sit at the intersection of Engineering, Finance, and Operations, responsible for driving cost transparency, surfacing savings opportunities, and ensuring cloud infrastructure spend is managed with discipline and accountability.

Cockroach Labs operates a significant cloud infrastructure footprint to power CockroachDB Cloud and our internal engineering environments. As we scale, the ability to understand, attribute, and optimize that spend is critical to our financial health and margin profile. This role will own the FinOps program end-to-end: stewarding the tooling that tracks cloud costs, partnering with Engineering and Finance to embed cost accountability across the organization, and building the cost allocation models that feed margin analysis and executive reporting.

R&D Operations plays a crucial role in enabling our organization to exceed customer expectations by shortening feedback loops and accelerating learning. By focusing on coordination and process effectiveness, R&D Operations minimizes friction and allows teams to concentrate on delivering high-quality products and services.

You Will

Own and evolve the FinOps tooling platform used to track, report on, and analyze cloud infrastructure costs across AWS, GCP, and other providers, ensuring the data is accurate, timely, and actionable.

Establish and run the FinOps operating cadence, including regular cost reviews, budget-vs-actuals variance analysis, anomaly detection, and a living optimization backlog with owners, timelines, and dollar-value targets.

Build and maintain cost allocation frameworks that attribute cloud spend to products, teams, and customer workloads to support COGS calculation, unit economics, and margin analysis in partnership with Finance.

Identify and prioritize cloud cost optimization opportunities, including rightsizing, committed use discounts (reserved instances/savings plans), idle resource cleanup, storage tiering, egress reduction, Kubernetes/container cost efficiency, and emerging AI and machine learning infrastructure costs such as GPU compute, model training pipelines, and inference workloads.

Manage cloud budgets and forecasts in close partnership with Finance and Engineering leadership; explain variances, surface risks early, and drive corrective action before spend exceeds plan.

Drive cost accountability across Engineering by establishing tagging and labeling standards, showback/chargeback models, and cost-aware development practices that embed FinOps into the engineering culture.

Build executive-level dashboards and reporting to communicate cloud spend trends, savings realized, optimization pipeline, and forecast vs. actuals to senior leadership and the board.

Partner cross-functionally with Engineering, Infrastructure, Procurement, and Finance to align cost reduction initiatives with platform roadmap priorities and business goals, without compromising service quality or engineering velocity.

Define governance frameworks, best practices, and FinOps policies that can scale with the business, including vendor discount strategy, commitment management, and cloud budget governance.

The Expectations

In your first 30 days, you will orient yourself by conducting a thorough review of Cockroach Labs' cloud infrastructure footprint, existing FinOps tooling, and current state of cost attribution and tagging. You will meet with key stakeholders across R&D and Finance to understand how cloud spend is tracked today, where the gaps are, and what decisions are being made without the data they deserve. Working closely with Finance, you will kick off the design of a tagging hierarchy that will allow cloud infrastructure costs to be viewed and rolled up across the dimensions that matter most: by team, product, environment, and customer workload.

By day 60, you will have finalized the tagging taxonomy with Finance sign-off and begun driving adoption and enforcement across Engineering. You will have established yourself as the SME on our FinOps tooling platform, leading the first internal training, handling configuration changes, and becoming the go-to resource for questions from budget owners and team leads. You will also have built and published the first cost optimization backlog, identifying the highest-value efficiency opportunities surfaced by the tool and beginning to execute on the most actionable of them.

By day 90, you will have established yourself as the definitive expert on where Cockroach Labs' cloud spend is occurring, and why. You will have partnered with Finance and budget owners to put budgets in place by category, delivered the first quarterly cloud spend report to leadership, and helped teams build the dashboards and showback views they need to make cost-aware decisions. When anomalies or trends surface, you will be the person who can explain them to an engineer, a finance partner, or an executive, with clarity and confidence.

You Have  

8+ years of experience in program management, cloud financial management, or a closely related field, with a proven track record of leading complex, cross-functional initiatives independently.

Hands-on FinOps tooling experience: production-grade experience with a dedicated FinOps platform (specifically CloudZero, Vantage, or Finout) is required, in addition to proficiency with native CSP cost management tools (AWS Cost Explorer / Cost & Usage Reports, GCP Billing, Azure Cost Management).

Strong financial acumen: practical experience with budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and cost allocation methodologies including showback, chargeback, and COGS/margin attribution.

Deep understanding of cloud pricing models: committed use discounts, reserved instances, savings plans, spot/preemptible pricing, data egress costs, storage tiers, and managed service pricing across major cloud providers.

Cost allocation and unit economics fluency: demonstrated ability to build or mature cost allocation frameworks that attribute shared infrastructure spend to products or customers in support of gross margin analysis.

Data analysis skills: comfortable working with large, complex billing datasets and translating raw cost data into actionable insights; experience building BI dashboards in Looker, Tableau, Quicksight, or similar tools.

Cross-functional influence: a track record of driving cost governance and cultural change across engineering and finance teams without direct authority, aligning engineers, finance partners, and senior leaders around shared cost accountability.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills: ability to present complex cost data clearly to both technical (infrastructure engineers, SREs) and non-technical (CFO, board) audiences.

A demonstrated practice of integrating AI tools into your daily workflow to improve speed, quality, and decision-making.

Fluency with AI across core tasks — research, drafting, analysis, planning — used as a default, not an exception.

FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP) or higher (e.g., FinOps Certified Professional) strongly preferred; cloud platform certifications (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with the FinOps for AI framework are a plus.

Experience building or maturing a FinOps practice is a significant differentiator; we are looking for someone comfortable operating in ambiguity, excited to define what great FinOps looks like at Cockroach Labs, and forward-thinking enough to extend cost governance into emerging areas like AI and machine learning infrastructure.

The Team

This role reports to Colin Minihan, Director of R&D Operations, and sits within the R&D Operations organization. You will work in close partnership with Finance and Cloud Engineering, serving as the connective layer between infrastructure cost reality and financial planning and reporting.

Colin is responsible for ensuring that operations within the R&D department are as efficient and impactful as possible. He has built and managed multiple high-performing program management organizations at various companies, often during crucial growth stages. His love of learning and building extends beyond his profession in software, always looking for the next DIY project or outdoor hobby in the Pacific Northwest.

Cockroach Labs is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer building a diverse and inclusive workforce. If you need additional accommodations to feel comfortable during your interview process, please email us at accessibility@cockroachlabs.com .

Cockroach Labs has a hybrid work model, with Roachers that are local to one of our offices coming in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and working flexibly the rest of the week. While we’ve learned valuable lessons working remotely, nothing can replace the connection, creativity, and fun that occurs when Roachers get together and we are committed to fostering a workplace that encourages collaboration and allows us all to do our best work.

Benefits

Stock Options

Medical Insurance

Vision Insurance

Dental Insurance

Life and Disability Insurance

Professional Development Funds

Flexible Time Off

Paid Holidays

Paid Sick Days

Paid Parental Leave

Retirement Benefits

Mental Wellbeing Benefits

And more!