Cloud Strategist - Intermediate
Toronto, ON, Canada
Contracted
Experienced
| Job Title: | RQ00143 - Cloud Strategist - Intermediate |
| Client: | Metrolinx |
| Work Location: | 20 Bay St, Toronto, ON |
| Job Type: | Hybrid |
| Start Date: | 2025-05-26 |
| End Date: | 2025-11-26 |
| #Business Days: | 133.00 |
| Hours per day or Week: | 7.25 hours per day (5 Days) |
Must haves
- 3+ years’ experience - Support & Drive cloud cost optimization strategies by identifying over-provisioned or underutilized resources
- 4+ years’ experience Leverage platforms like Apptio (Cloudability), Azure Cost Management, and Power BI for reporting and analysis.
- 4+ years’ experience Implement tagging and resource management policies to ensure accurate data collection for forecasting and accountability.
- 4+ years’ experience Continuously optimize tool usage to derive actionable insights and improve cloud cost transparency across departments
- 4+ years’ experience Oversee the implementation and onboarding of the FinOps tool, ensuring data accuracy, role-based access, and reporting alignment with organizational goals
Key contributions
Optimization & Strategic Insight
- Support & Drive cloud cost optimization strategies by identifying over-provisioned or underutilized resources
- Work closely with engineering and product teams to incorporate financial perspectives into design and architecture decisions.
- Collaborate with vendors and procurement teams to evaluate pricing structures and opportunities for savings.
- Drive outcomes from FinOps tools by turning cloud cost data into insights, and insights into strategic actions that reduce spend, improve forecast accuracy, and align investments with business priorities.
- Design and implement a comprehensive cloud tagging strategy to ensure full visibility of cloud spend across departments, applications, environments, and projects.
- Collaborate with engineering, DevOps, and operations teams to enforce tagging compliance through automation, tooling, and policy frameworks.
- Identify gaps or inconsistencies in tagging and lead remediation efforts to improve cost attribution accuracy and chargeback/showback processes.
- Maintain documentation and training to ensure ongoing awareness and adoption of tagging best practices.
- Build and maintain multi-year cloud cost forecasts in alignment with technology and business roadmaps.
- Analyze historical cloud usage trends to project accurate future spend across cloud providers.
- Collaborate with Finance and Technology teams to ensure budget alignment, including ongoing updates to forecasts and actuals.
- Develop and maintain accurate cloud cost forecasts based on usage trends, business plans, and anticipated changes in workloads.
- Drive re-baselining exercises and year-over-year forecasting improvements to align financials with actual consumption trends.
- Utilize cloud-native tools (e.g., Azure Cost Management) and FinOps platforms (e.g., Apptio Cloudability,) to provide cost visibility and trend analysis.
- Own the creation of executive dashboards, variance analysis, and forecast accuracy metrics.
- Identify gaps between forecasted and actual spend and drive corrective actions.
- Develop models for cost attribution, showback/chargeback, and unit cost analysis
- Leverage platforms like Apptio (Cloudability), Azure Cost Management, and Power BI for reporting and analysis.
- Implement tagging and resource management policies to ensure accurate data collection for forecasting and accountability.
- Continuously optimize tool usage to derive actionable insights and improve cloud cost transparency across departments
- Oversee the implementation and onboarding of the FinOps tool, ensuring data accuracy, role-based access, and reporting alignment with organizational goals
- Education Completion of a diploma in Computer Science, or a related discipline – or a combination of education, training and experience deemed equivalent
- Experience Minimum six (8) years’ experience in the analysis, design and development of corporate system architecture. Experience developing & designing roadmaps, implement strategies & transformation plans for clients. Hands-on experience with FinOps tools .
- Certifications or Designations FinOps Certified Practitioner or equivalent certification
- Customer Service Teamwork Initiative
- Quality & Safety Engaged in the Business
- Strong knowledge of Azure, billing structures, and optimization levers.
- Demonstrated experience in cloud tagging implementation, governance, and remediation.
- Advanced skills in Excel and Power BI; experience with FinOps tools like Apptio Cloudability, Cloud Health, or native cloud cost platforms.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate financial data into actionable insights for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Prior experience in large-scale cloud transformations or hybrid cloud environments.
- Experience creating tagging policies via Azure Policy or custom enforcement scripts. Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and cloud cost tagging best practices.
- Background in cloud architecture, infrastructure engineering, or DevOps a strong plus.
- No unusual or disagreeable conditions
- Location: 2 days onsite/3 days remote
- Public Sector Experience: no
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