Staff AI FinOps Governance Lead

As a Staff AI FinOps Governance Lead, you will lead financial governance for UKG's AI platforms and services, driving accountability, transparency, and optimization across our AI investments. This role combines expertise in cloud financial management, AI infrastructure economics, and cross-functional program leadership to ensure AI innovation is delivered efficiently and sustainably.

You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Finance, Procurement, and Cloud Operations to establish governance, optimize AI spend, and provide executive visibility into the financial performance of UKG's AI portfolio. This role requires someone who understands both cloud economics and the emerging cost drivers of Generative AI, including LLMs, inference services, vector databases, GPUs, and AI agent workloads., AI FinOps Governance & Strategy

• Lead AI FinOps governance across UKG AI initiatives, establishing operating rhythms, accountability, and financial transparency.
• Define AI cost KPIs, operational metrics, and executive dashboards that measure efficiency, utilization, and business value.
• Develop forecasting models and long-range financial plans for AI infrastructure and GenAI services.
• Present AI cost trends, optimization progress, forecasts, and investment recommendations to senior leadership.

AI Cost Management & Optimization

• Monitor AI usage and spend across cloud providers and AI platforms, identifying anomalies, inefficiencies, and optimization opportunities.
• Drive measurable cost optimization initiatives across model selection, inference patterns, caching strategies, prompt optimization, and infrastructure utilization.
• Evaluate tradeoffs between reserved capacity, committed use discounts, pay-as-you-go pricing, and emerging AI consumption models.
• Partner with Engineering to optimize token consumption, GPU utilization, model routing, and workload placement.

Governance & Financial Controls

• Establish AI spend guardrails including budgets, alerts, quotas, and financial governance policies.
• Partner with Cloud Operations, Procurement, and Finance to manage cloud commitments, AI provider agreements, and consumption forecasting.
• Ensure accurate cost allocation, tagging, chargeback/showback, and unit economics across AI services.
• Design governance processes that proactively prevent cost overruns and improve financial accountability.

Engineering Partnership

• Collaborate with engineering teams to incorporate FinOps principles into AI architecture and platform design.
• Influence technical decisions by providing cost transparency and recommendations throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Support engineering teams with dashboards, training, financial insights, and optimization guidance.
• Develop cost-to-serve models and AI unit economics that inform product strategy and investment decisions.

Reporting & Analytics

• Build executive dashboards and reporting that translate complex cloud and AI consumption data into actionable business insights.
• Analyze cloud billing, AI usage, and infrastructure metrics using SQL, Python, BI platforms, and cloud-native reporting tools.
• Identify trends, forecast future consumption, and quantify the financial impact of optimization initiatives.

• 7+ years of experience in FinOps, Cloud Financial Management, Cloud Infrastructure, Technical Program Management, or related disciplines.
• Experience managing cloud costs across GCP, AWS, Azure, or multi-cloud environments.
• Experience partnering with engineering organizations to drive technical and financial optimization initiatives.
• Experience presenting financial insights and recommendations to senior leadership.

Technical Skills

• Strong understanding of cloud billing models and FinOps best practices.
• Working knowledge of AI infrastructure including LLM services, GPU-based workloads, inference platforms, and cloud AI offerings.
• Experience with SQL, Python, Excel, and BI visualization tools.
• Familiarity with cloud-native cost management platforms and FinOps tooling.

Core Competencies

• Executive communication and storytelling with data.
• Financial modeling, forecasting, and budgeting.
• AI and cloud cost optimization.
• Program leadership across cross-functional organizations.
• Analytical problem solving and strategic thinking.
• Ability to influence without direct authority., * FinOps Certified Practitioner or FinOps Certified Professional.
• Experience with Generative AI platforms including Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar services.
• Experience with AI cost optimization techniques including prompt optimization, model routing, caching, context management, and inference optimization.
• Understanding of AI unit economics, token attribution, AI agent cost models, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures.
• Experience with cloud commitment strategies including CUDs, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, or AI capacity reservations.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Finance, Mathematics, Business, or a related discipline (MBA preferred).

The pay range for this position is $102,300 to $161,755. The actual base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and work location. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan and to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation. Learn more about UKG's benefits and rewards at https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits

At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. We never stop learning. We never stop challenging the norm. We push for better, and we celebrate the wins along the way. Here, you'll get flexibility that's real, benefits you can count on, and a team that succeeds together. Because at UKG, your work matters and so do you., UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people-first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry - because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge. Learn more at ukg.com. Equal Opportunity Employer UKG is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, disability, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories. View The EEO Know Your Rights poster (https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/EEOC_KnowYourRights_screen_reader_10_20.pdf) UKG participates in E-Verify. View the E-Verify posters here (https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/EVerifyParticipationPoster.pdf) . It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.