FinOps Internal, Cloud & Telco Cost Manager

The FinOps – Internal, Cloud & Telco Cost Manager is responsible for ensuring full transparency, accuracy, optimisation, and governance of all technology cost structures across cloud, internal IT services, and global telco networks. The role leads financial operations (FinOps) activities, partners with engineering and service teams to optimise consumption, and drives financial accountability across Technology Operations. This includes cost modelling, budgeting support, forecasting, vendor invoice validation, cloud optimisation recommendations, and ensuring alignment with Finance, Procurement, and global architectural guardrails.

Core Responsibilities:

• Own FinOps processes across cloud (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS), internal IT platforms, and global telco services.
• Manage full cost transparency dashboards including consumption, allocation, and showback/chargeback models.
• Analyse cloud spends patterns and recommend optimisation actions such as rightsizing, reservations, savings plans, decommissioning, and automation.
• Validate invoices for cloud, telco, software licensing, and managed service providers, coordinate corrections, and disputes with vendors.
• Collaborate with Finance to ensure budget accuracy, financial forecasting, accruals, and variance analysis.
• Maintain cost guardrails and financial governance frameworks aligned with EA, Procurement, and Security controls.
• Integrate cost signals with demand, capacity, and service performance insights to drive smarter investment decisions.
• Support RFPs, sourcing cycles, and commercial negotiations with Global Procurement and the Vendor Manager.
• Review cost impacts of changes, projects, migrations, and new services with PMO and service teams.
• Provide cloud cost modelling for migrations, business cases, and strategy decisions.
• Accountable for accuracy and quality of cost reporting across cloud, telco, and internal IT.
• Ensure timely and accurate budget forecasts, month-end inputs, and financial reconciliations.
• Drive cloud and telco cost optimisation programmes with measurable savings.
• Produce actionable insights for senior leadership on cost trends, anomalies, and opportunities.
• Ensure financial compliance with Licensing, Contract, EA, Security, and Procurement standards.
• Partner with engineering teams to embed FinOps best practices into daily operations.
• Own tooling used for cost analysis (e.g., cloud cost management platforms, BI dashboards).
• Ensure chargeback/showback models are accurate and communicated to stakeholders.
• Support vendor governance with financial scoring, rate analysis, and unit cost benchmarking.

Global Delivery & Collaboration:

• Partner with global Finance teams for forecasting, budgeting, and financial governance.
• Collaborate with Regional Service Managers to understand regional consumption and cost patterns.
• Work with Cloud, Network, and Platform teams to translate consumption into capacity and cost profiles.
• Engage Global Procurement for sourcing, contract review, and negotiation processes.
• Support Security and EA to align cost models with compliance, architecture, and optimisation guardrails.
• Coordinate with MSPs (incl. Cognizant) to validate invoices, consumption, and performance impacts.
• Provide cost insights for global initiatives, migrations, and technology refresh programmes.

Key Deliverables:

• Monthly Cloud, Telco & IT Cost Report, and executive summary.
• Cost transparency dashboards including allocation, consumption, and optimisation insights.
• Savings recommendations and realised optimisation tracking.
• Annual budget inputs and rolling forecasts.
• Invoice validation reports and dispute resolutions.
• Cost models for migrations, business cases, and strategic programmes.
• Chargeback/showback documentation and unit cost models.
• Quarterly Cost Governance Pack including risks, trends, and savings progress.

KPIs & Success Measures:

• Accuracy of forecasts, budgets, and chargeback/showback models.
• Cloud and telco optimisation savings delivered vs targets.
• Timeliness and quality of monthly cost reporting.
• Invoice discrepancy rate and resolution cycle time.
• Stakeholder satisfaction with cost insights and transparency.
• Reduction of waste (unused resources, overprovisioning, idle workloads).
• Compliance with EA, Security, Procurement, and financial governance.

Knowledge, qualifications, and experience:

• Strong expertise in FinOps practices and cloud cost management (AWS, Azure, GCP preferred).
• Understanding telco billing, network cost structures, and global carrier models.
• Knowledge of IT infrastructure, cloud architectures, and platform service models.
• Experience with BI tools and cost analytics platforms (Power Bi, Tableau, cloud native cost tools).
• Financial analysis, budgeting, modelling, and cost allocation skills.
• Understanding Enterprise Architecture, security baselines, and procurement governance.
• Ability to translate complex cost data into actionable insights for engineering and leadership.
• Strong stakeholder and vendor management skills in global environments.

Skills and Competencies:

• Builds customer loyalty: Demonstrates an understanding of the customer (internal/external), builds productive customer relationships with integrity, and takes responsibility for ensuring customer advocacy.
• Delivers against operational objectives: Translates strategic priorities into medium-term operational reality for own part of the business, respecting and aligning with the values and managing interdependencies with other parts of Hays.
• Engaging Communication: Engages and influences by using a wide range of communication methods and styles with the ability to present complex technical issues to varied populations. Facilitates understanding and encourages communication both within own team and more broadly.
• Builds collaborative relationships: Establishes effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders inside and outside their immediate working environment, valuing the contribution from others and leveraging networks across Hays.
• Facilitates transformational change: Facilitates the implementation of change and transformation within the workplace by guiding others and helping them adapt is a positive ambassador of change.
• Identifying and developing talent: Identifies and appropriately deploys key knowledge, skills and experience required across their organisation. Uses Hays’ people process to attract, develop, and engage and retain the appropriate talent.
• Demonstrates personal resilience: Highly efficient, has the organisation skills to manage a diverse range of tasks and see work through to completion, in a timely manner, ensuring deadlines are met. Able to cope well with pressure, deals constructively with setbacks.
• Demonstrates continuous learning: Demonstrates continuous interest in personal skills in development and learning, aiming to develop senior leadership capabilities and seeking continuous feedback to manage own impact and maintain self-awareness.

Situational Requirements:

• Comfortable travelling– a dispersed geographic spread of countries.
• Able to work across multiple time zones.
• Fluency in written and oral English.

At Hays, we share a passion for creating a culture of opportunities for our people to flourish and succeed, whatever your background. We know that diversity of perspective and an inclusive approach, which encourages those experiences and views to be heard, is great for business and therefore your career.