[Remote] FinOps Cloud Engineer
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Principal Financial Group is seeking a skilled FinOps Cloud Engineer to join their Information Services team. In this role, you will be responsible for managing, optimizing, and governing cloud costs across the organization, developing solutions to enhance the FinOps strategy, and collaborating with various teams to achieve cost transparency and smarter decision-making.
Responsibilities
- 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 FinOps 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 FinOps 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
Skills
- 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/CloudFormation)
- Familiarity with FinOps principles and frameworks
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
- Must have the 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 FinOps
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- Experience with BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, QuickSight)
- Knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized workloads on AWS (e.g., EKS)
- Background in finance, accounting, or business analytics
Benefits
- 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.
- Flexible Time Off (FTO) is provided to salaried (exempt) employees and provides the opportunity to take time away from the office with pay for vacation, personal or short-term illness.
- Pension Eligible
- This role offers in-office, hybrid (blending at least three office days in a typical workweek), and remote work arrangements (only if residing more than 30 miles from Des Moines, IA, Raleigh, NC, or Charlotte, NC).
- At Principal, we value connecting on both a personal and professional level. Together, we’re imagining a more purpose-led future for financial services – and that starts with you. Our success depends on the unique experiences, backgrounds, and talents of our employees. And we support our employees the same way we support our customers: with comprehensive, competitive benefit offerings crafted to protect their physical, financial, and social well-being.
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