## About the Role

Amplitude is hiring a Staff FinOps Engineer in San Francisco, CA to build the technical foundation for cloud and vendor spend visibility. The FinOps Engineering function sits between engineering, finance, and product, with responsibility for making spend efficient, transparent, and actionable.

This is a high-impact role with broad scope. You will work closely with leaders across Engineering, Platform, Finance, and Product to build the data, tooling, and operating practices that support forecasting, architectural decisions, and long-range planning. The function is a small team with a large surface area, and this role combines hands-on engineering with cross-functional program leadership.

The work is focused on turning cost and usage data into savings, better decisions, and measurable business outcomes. You will also help define guardrails for cost-efficient engineering and handle engineering vendor negotiations, licensing, and contracts.

## Key Responsibilities

– Own the cost and vendor data platform, including pipelines, models, and storage that consolidate cloud and vendor spend into a single source of truth.
– Translate cost and usage data into insights, recommendations, and playbooks for Engineering, Infrastructure, Product, and Finance.
– Implement optimizations directly when needed, including rightsizing, storage tiering, query optimization, metrics/logs reduction, and plan changes.
– Build self-service FinOps tooling such as dashboards, scorecards, alerts, bots, and internal tools.
– Define cost guardrails and best practices for architecture, and embed them into infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and review processes.
– Partner with Finance and vendor owners on forecasting, scenario modeling, and actuals-vs-forecast reconciliation.
– Lead multi-quarter cost initiatives from problem definition through execution and measurement.
– Run reviews, office hours, and trainings to improve cost awareness and FinOps maturity across teams.
– Define KPIs and telemetry to measure savings, unit economics, ROI, and performance or reliability impact.
– Stay current on cloud pricing, vendor offerings, and FinOps practices, and apply that knowledge to architecture, contracts, and tooling.

## Required Skills

– 7+ years of hands-on experience in FinOps, SRE, Platform, or Infrastructure engineering.
– Demonstrated success reducing spend and improving unit economics in a modern cloud environment, with AWS preferred.
– Ability to write production-quality code in Python, TypeScript, or a similar language.
– Experience building data pipelines and dashboards.
– Working knowledge of financial concepts such as budgets, forecasts, ROI, and unit economics.
– Experience working with cost and usage data such as AWS CUR, SaaS vendor exports, or observability billing data.
– Ability to model cost data into schemas and metrics that work for engineers, leadership, and Finance.
– Examples of personally implementing infrastructure, configuration, or code changes that reduced spend.
– Strong ownership and the ability to drive ambiguous, cross-functional work end to end.
– Comfort balancing roadmap management with technical depth, including Terraform modules, Kubernetes manifests, or Datadog/SaaS billing settings.
– Clear communication skills across engineering, product, finance, and executive audiences.
– Strong SQL and analytics skills, with a habit of instrumenting work and validating outcomes.
– Ability to optimize cost without harming performance, availability, or developer velocity.
– Curiosity and a willingness to learn new domains quickly.

## Cloud Platforms & Technologies

### Cloud Providers
– AWS
– GCP

### Containers & Kubernetes
– Kubernetes

### Programming Languages
– Python
– TypeScript
– SQL

### Infrastructure as Code / Delivery
– Terraform
– CI/CD

### Monitoring & Observability
– Datadog
– Observability tooling
– Metrics
– Logs

### Data & Analytics
– AWS CUR
– SaaS vendor exports
– Observability billing data
– Data pipelines
– Dashboards
– Scorecards
– Alerts
– Bots
– Internal tools
– Analytics tools
– Telemetry
– Spreadsheets

### AI / Vendor Ecosystem
– AI providers
– AI/ML
– Core SaaS

## FinOps Responsibilities

– Build a trusted source of truth for cloud and vendor cost visibility.
– Drive cloud cost optimization across hosting, observability, AI providers, and other strategic vendors.
– Create spend insight and decision-support tooling for internal stakeholders.
– Establish cost guardrails and architecture standards for efficient engineering.
– Support forecasting, budgeting, and variance tracking with Finance.
– Measure savings and business impact through KPIs, unit economics, and ROI.
– Lead vendor-related cost efforts, including negotiations, licensing, and contracts.
– Improve FinOps maturity through training, reviews, and office hours.

## Benefits

– Eligible for equity, benefits, and other forms of compensation.
– Total target cash ranges, inclusive of bonus or commission:
– Colorado: $198,000–$299,000
– New York City: $220,000–$331,000
– San Francisco Bay Area: $220,000–$331,000
– California outside the San Francisco Bay Area: $198,000–$299,000
– Washington: $198,000–$299,000
– Washington-specific benefits:
– Unlimited PTO
– 10 to 13 holidays annually
– Medical, dental, and vision PPO and CDHP plans
– Company-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan

## Useful Links

– Company Website: amplitude.com

## Why You Might Be Interested

This role offers broad ownership over the systems and practices that make cloud and vendor spend visible and manageable. It combines hands-on engineering with cross-functional program leadership, so you can both implement optimizations and shape forecasting, standards, and governance. The scope spans AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, observability, AI providers, and other strategic vendors, creating a wide technical and financial surface area. If you want to influence both infrastructure decisions and business outcomes, this is a substantial FinOps opportunity.