## About the Role

Cockroach Labs is hiring a Senior Technical Program Manager, FinOps for its Research & Development Operations team in Bengaluru, India. This role exists to strengthen and mature cloud financial management across the business, with a focus on cost transparency, accountability, and scalable operating practices.

You will work at the intersection of Engineering, Finance, Procurement, and Operations to manage cloud spend across CockroachDB Cloud and internal engineering environments. The role owns the FinOps program end to end, including tooling, cost allocation, reporting, governance, and optimization initiatives.

This position reports to Colin Minihan, Director of R&D Operations. It includes close partnership with Finance and Cloud Engineering, and it operates in a hybrid model for employees local to an office: on-site Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with flexibility the rest of the week.

## Key Responsibilities

– Own and improve the FinOps tooling used to track, analyze, and report cloud infrastructure costs across AWS, GCP, and other providers.
– Run the FinOps operating rhythm, including cost reviews, budget-to-actual analysis, anomaly review, and an optimization backlog with owners and targets.
– Build and maintain cost allocation models that support product, team, and workload attribution for COGS, unit economics, and margin analysis.
– Identify and drive cloud savings opportunities across rightsizing, commitment programs, idle resource cleanup, storage tiering, egress reduction, Kubernetes efficiency, and AI/ML infrastructure costs.
– Partner with Finance and Engineering leadership on budgeting and forecasting, including variance explanation and early risk identification.
– Establish tagging and labeling standards, showback/chargeback practices, and cost-aware development behaviors across Engineering.
– Create executive dashboards and reporting for cloud spend trends, realized savings, optimization progress, and forecast accuracy.
– Define scalable governance, policy, and best-practice frameworks for commitments, vendor discounts, and cloud budget control.
– Work cross-functionally to align cost initiatives with platform priorities and business goals without reducing service quality or engineering speed.

## Required Skills

– 8+ years of experience in program management, cloud financial management, or a closely related field.
– Production experience with a dedicated FinOps platform, specifically CloudZero, Vantage, or Finout.
– Experience with native cloud cost management tools, including:
– AWS Cost Explorer / Cost & Usage Reports
– GCP Billing
– Azure Cost Management
– Strong financial experience with budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and cost allocation methods.
– Understanding of showback, chargeback, and COGS/margin attribution.
– Knowledge of cloud pricing models, including committed use discounts, reserved instances, savings plans, spot/preemptible pricing, data egress, storage tiers, and managed services.
– Ability to build or mature cost allocation frameworks for shared infrastructure spend.
– Experience analyzing large billing datasets and creating BI dashboards.
– Ability to influence across engineering and finance without direct authority.
– Strong written and verbal communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences.
– Demonstrated use of AI tools in daily work for research, drafting, analysis, and planning.

## Preferred Skills

– FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP) or higher.
– Cloud certifications in AWS, GCP, or Azure.
– Familiarity with the FinOps for AI framework.
– Experience building or maturing a FinOps practice.

## Cloud Platforms & Technologies

### Cloud Providers
– AWS
– GCP
– Azure

### FinOps Platforms
– CloudZero
– Vantage
– Finout
– AWS Cost Explorer
– AWS Cost & Usage Reports
– GCP Billing
– Azure Cost Management

### Reporting & BI
– Looker
– Tableau
– Quicksight

### Infrastructure & Workloads
– Kubernetes
– Containers
– GPU compute
– Model training pipelines
– Inference workloads

### Cost Management Concepts
– Committed use discounts
– Reserved instances
– Savings plans
– Spot/preemptible pricing
– Storage tiers
– Egress costs
– Tagging and labeling
– Showback
– Chargeback

## FinOps Responsibilities

– Improve visibility into cloud spend across providers and environments.
– Build cost allocation models for product, team, and workload attribution.
– Establish budget governance, forecasting, and variance reporting.
– Maintain an optimization backlog tied to measurable savings targets.
– Drive cost accountability through tagging standards and showback/chargeback.
– Support margin analysis, COGS attribution, and unit economics reporting.
– Identify efficiency opportunities across infrastructure, Kubernetes, and AI/ML workloads.
– Define governance for commitment management and vendor discount strategy.

## Benefits

– Medical insurance
– Flexible time off
– Paid parental leave
– Mental wellbeing benefits
– Internet reimbursement
– Wellness allowance
– Food allowance
– Office commute reimbursement
– Hybrid work model

## Why You Might Be Interested

This role offers the chance to shape FinOps practices at scale in a business with a significant cloud footprint. It combines program leadership, financial rigor, and engineering partnership in a highly visible position. The work has direct impact on cloud cost visibility, margin analysis, and executive reporting. It may be well suited to someone who wants to define and mature a FinOps function rather than simply operate within one.