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Senior FinOps Analyst

Lifted, an Upwork Company™Chicago, IL🇺🇸United StatesPosted Oct 7, 2026

Why this role stands out

Accelerate your career at Lifted, an Upwork Company, where you will play a pivotal role in optimizing cloud strategy and driving financial efficiency for global engineering teams in a fully remote environment. This position is perfect for a proactive, enterprise-experienced analyst who thrives on cross-functional collaboration and wants to make a measurable impact on cloud infrastructure and AI spending. Apply today to join a forward-thinking team and take your FinOps expertise to the next level.

Quick overview

SeniorityMid Senior
Employment typeContract
Work modeRemote
LocationChicago, IL, United States
Posted2 weeks ago
ForecastingLLMGenerative AIJiraSlack

Job description

We are seeking a Senior FinOps Analyst to advise engineering and R&D teams on cloud spending, investigate cost anomalies, and identify actionable optimization opportunities.

In this role, you will serve as a primary partner-facing resource for APAC-based teams, helping align cloud spending with forecasts and measurable business outcomes through cost analysis, education, and proactive engagement.

Enterprise experience is strongly preferred.

    Key Responsibilities

    • Serve as a primary contact for engineering teams seeking cloud cost guidance, responding to questions in real time through Slack and other asynchronous channels.
    • Proactively engage with high-spending R&D teams to:
      • Review monthly cloud spending.
      • Identify cost optimization opportunities.
      • Understand upcoming engineering roadmap plans and their potential cost implications.
    • Capture meeting notes, recommendations, recurring questions, and emerging cost patterns.
    • Monitor cloud and AI/LLM spending for anomalies, spikes, and inefficiencies.
    • Investigate spending variances, produce written root-cause analyses, and recommend optimization opportunities to team owners.
    • Document investigations in Jira and flag relevant findings for monthly reporting.
    • Participate in monthly forecasting by:
      • Reconciling central forecasts with team-level projections.
      • Documenting discrepancies.
      • Capturing team plans and anticipated spending.
    • Contribute practitioner insights and team-sourced information, including AI/LLM cost drivers, to Showback reporting and spending reviews.
    • Support cloud cost awareness and education across engineering and R&D teams.
    • Audit and update technical wiki content and documentation.
    • Model team cost projections and track team investments and projects.
    • Respond to cost-related requests through Slack, email, and other communication channels.
    • Focus on advisory and analytical delivery. Central budget ownership, vendor contract modeling, and platform/tooling engineering are outside the scope of this engagement.

      Must-Have Skills

      • Senior-level experience in FinOps (cloud financial operations).
      • Strong expertise in cloud cost management and optimization.
      • Proven ability to investigate spending anomalies and produce clear, written root-cause analyses.
      • Experience advising and consulting directly with R&D or engineering teams in a partner-facing capacity.
      • Experience with cloud cost forecasting, including aligning central forecasts with team-level projections.
      • Familiarity with OpenAI/LLM cost drivers and monitoring LLM spending.
      • Experience with cost modeling and tracking team investments or projects.
      • Proficiency with Jira for documenting investigations and Slack for real-time and asynchronous support.
      • Experience maintaining technical documentation or wiki spaces and contributing to recurring reporting, such as Showback.
      • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage stakeholders and communicate findings effectively.

      Nice-to-Have Skills

      • AI/LLM governance expertise.
      • AI/LLM variable cost management expertise.

      Required Tools & Platforms

      • Jira and Slack.
      • Familiarity with OpenAI/LLM cost drivers and LLM spend monitoring.
      • Experience working with technical documentation and wiki spaces; no specific wiki platform is required.

      Location, Time & Engagement

      • Open to candidates based in eligible LATAM locations or the United States.
      • Ability to cover APAC business hours, with some overlap with Pacific Time and the afternoon in Central Time.
      • Remote contract engagement, 40 hours per week

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