FinOps Practitioner

As a FinOps Practitioner, you will play a strategic and operational role in managing, optimizing, and governing the financial aspects of our hybrid multi-cloud ecosystem. You will bridge the gap between finance, engineering, and business stakeholders, ensuring that cloud consumption is cost-efficient, transparent, and aligned with business objectives. 
 
Your mission will be to embed a culture of financial accountability into engineering practices, enable cost visibility and forecasting, and define the governance frameworks that make cloud spending predictable, optimized, and value-driven. 
 
This role requires both financial insight and technical expertise, along with strong collaboration skills to effectively support and engage teams across the organization.

Key Responsibilities 

Cloud Financial Governance & Optimization 

Monitor, analyze, and optimize hybrid multi-cloud usage and costs. 

Implement optimization techniques (reserved instances, spot instances, autoscaling, right-sizing). 

Define and enforce cloud financial governance standards, including tagging, cost allocation, and budget controls. 

Track vendor pricing changes and assess impact on budgets and forecasts. 

Budgeting, Forecasting & Cost Management 

Collaborate with finance teams to establish accurate cloud budgets and forecasts. 

Implement chargeback and showback models to align costs with consumption. 

Ensure cloud spend aligns with strategic and financial targets. 

Support cost scenario planning to evaluate business cases for cloud adoption. 

Reporting & Compliance 

Produce actionable cost and usage reports for stakeholders at multiple levels (engineering leads, executives). 

Ensure compliance with Belgian and EU financial, security, and reporting regulations applicable to public companies. 

Define reporting standards to ensure transparency and predictability of cloud spend, in full alignment with the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS). 

Collaboration, Training & Advocacy 

Educate engineering and product teams on cost-aware design and FinOps principles. 

Partner with procurement to negotiate contracts, enterprise agreements, and discounts. 

Act as the 'translator' between finance and technology, fostering a shared language and goals. 

Tooling & Automation 

Leverage FinOps tooling and automation to ensure effective monitoring, governance, and continuous optimization of cloud costs. 

Automate spend monitoring, anomaly detection, and reporting. 

Integrate FinOps practices into CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code. 

Educational Background: 

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in finance, computer science, engineering, or equivalent experience. 

Technical Expertise: 

- Hands-on experience with major cloud providers. 
- Practical knowledge of cost optimization strategies and FinOps tooling. 
- Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and automation frameworks. 
- Understanding of Kubernetes cost management and cloud-native workload economics. 
- Ability to analyze usage patterns and translate them into actionable cost-saving measures. 

Finance & Business Skills: 

- Strong understanding of budgeting, forecasting, cost allocation, and reporting. 
- Knowledge of cloud pricing models and discount programs. 
- Ability to interpret technical usage data into financial insights for non-technical stakeholders. 

Soft Skills: 

- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. 
- Excellent communication skills, with ability to engage executives and engineers alike. 
- Collaborative mindset, bridging silos between Finance, IT, and Product. 

Preferred Qualifications 

- FinOps Certified Practitioner (FCP) or Advanced certifications. 
- Cloud certifications. 
- Experience in SaaS financial management and cloud vendor contract negotiation. 
- Background in regulated environments (financial sector, public sector, NIS2/ISO 27001 contexts). 

Criteria  

Mandatory: 

- At least 3 years of proven experience in a similar function. 
- Fluency in French (C1) or Dutch(C1), and English(C2) (written and spoken). 
- Practical hands-on experience with FinOps practices in cloud environments. 
- Experience using at least one major FinOps tool, with reporting aligned to the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS). 
- Ability to work cross-functionally with finance, engineering, and operations. 

Attribution (nice-to-have): 

- Prior exposure to compliance standards (ISO 27001, NIS2, CIS). 
- Experience in CI/CD and DevSecOps contexts with cost optimization baked into pipelines. 
- Proven ability to engage senior stakeholders effectively, delivering clear and well-structured presentations while adapting communication to both technical and executive audiences. 

Our offer

Within our open corporate culture, you contribute to the digital transformation of SNCB. You will have a job with social impact and ample opportunity to make your own contribution. In addition to a good work-life balance and a competitive salary, you will receive the following benefits:

• the possibility to work remotely + flexible working hours;

• 35 days of leave;

• a company car + a public transport season ticket;

• a target bonus;

• a comprehensive insurance package (affiliation without own contribution, excl. outpatient costs for family members);

  • hospitalisation and dental care for the whole family;

  • outpatient costs (= medical costs separate from hospitalisation);

  • group insurance: supplementary pension, work disability and death (cafeteria plan);

  • accidents at work (extralegal);

• meal vouchers and eco-vouchers;

• net allowances for remote working and carwash + internet budget.