Business Relationship Management & Finops Lead

This is a Full Time Job

Location: Santa Monica, California, United States; Bristol, Connecticut, United States; Burbank, California, United States; New York, New York, United States; Seattle, Washington, United States

Job Summary:

Department/Group Description:

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we're reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world's most beloved stories while also transforming Disney's media business for the future. Whether that's evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney's unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.The Enterprise Technology mission at Disney is to deliver technology solutions that align to business strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation. We drive Disney's competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence!

You will be part of the Cloud & Data Transformation Engineering organization Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology FinOps Team, that provides next-level cloud and data services to unleash digital magic for Disney supports cloud cost management and optimization across our most critical technology partners. We use modern technologies, design patterns, culture, and organizational alignment to enable teams to seamlessly ship content, products, and magical experiences better, faster, safer, and happier. Our mission is to optimize costs, nurture critical partner relationships, and drive efficiency through innovative processes. We are dedicated to pioneering transformative solutions that uphold financial prudence, foster collaboration, and empower sustainable growth for all of Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology from within Engineering Services.

Responsibilities of the Role:
The cloud first strategy has driven extreme growth across the cloud providers, platforms, and tools used across the enterprise to deliver Disney experiences and as such, this position is focused on the following business areas:
• Cloud Provider Billing and Allocation
• Financial Forecasting, Data Cost Analysis, and Reporting
• Cloud Enablement and Optimization
• Vendor Management

Billing and Allocation:
• Support Data Engineering team during monthly invoice processing and validation across all billing sources (10+), inclusive of appropriate chargeback and credit allocation
• Work closely with Disney segments and third-party cloud providers on billing issue resolution
• Consult with non-cloud product owners when billing issues arise
• Partner with Engineering to accurately forecast cloud spend and make re-forecast adjustments as priorities and milestones change
• Collaborate with delivery teams to estimate cloud cost impact of new feature launches
• Build cloud cost models to drive strategic decision making
• Be involved end-to-end on top cloud decisions; partner with internal and external stakeholders, provide analysis and presentations to communicate insights
• Triage and investigate cloud cost anomalies by identifying drivers and engaging service owners
• Drive new billing vendor intake and onboarding

Reporting:
• Analyze cost and usage trends and present recommendations for cost optimization.
• Support ad-hoc reporting requests from leadership reporting asks as necessary based on FinOps datasets in Databricks
• Own cloud billing and optimization reporting including creating self service queries and reports segment strategic partners can leverage to run efficiently
• Analyze cloud cost data across various platforms to ensure cost-effectiveness and efficiency.

Cloud Enablement
• Partner with Cloud Vendors and Segment Strategic Partners to support training activities
• Consult on cloud cost estimates including managing self service cloud cost calculators
• Inform and partner with other areas of the organization on cloud financial practices and management.
• Build cloud forecasting models to drive strategic decision making around feature launches, vendor negotiations, reduce cost, and more.
• Act as a trusted advisor providing thought leadership on new cloud service provider optimization product launches
• Provide cost optimization guidance to segments
• Be a FinOps evangelist and work closely with product, business, technology, and finance to pursue cost optimization opportunities while enhancing business value
• Educate and partner with other areas of the organization on cloud financial practices and financial responsibilities

Vendor Management
• Collaborate with vendor partners to utilize contractual benefits, included training and consulting credits
• Participate in Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR's) to ensure vendor performance meets expectations
• Leverage cost modeling during vendor negotiations to maximize value and support data-driven decisions

Requirements
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Finance, Computer Science, Economics, or Data Science, or equivalent
• 7+ years of experience in a cloud business operations role, preferably in technology with an emphasis on forecast accuracy and cost optimization.
• 6+ years experience in product engineering or data engineering
• 5+ years cloud experience (AWS, Google, Azure)
• 3+ years of experience in financial analysis and forecasting, preferably in technology or cloud
• Proven ability to use data to build a narrative and tell a story
• Deep knowledge of Excel (arrays formulas) and SQL (creating complex queries joining multiple datasets)
• Both technically adept in multi-cloud strategies & technologies and highly skilled at building strong partnerships that to deliver critical organizational outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communications; proven ability to develop and deliver presentations geared for Senior and Executive Management
• Proficiency in analyzing large, complex financial data sets, extracting key insights, and translating them into actionable recommendations.
• Strong analytical skills coupled with a creative mindset to craft compelling narratives from financial data, enhancing decision-making processes within the organization.
• Experience with cloud application development platforms, tools and utilities
• Experiencing managing multiple engineering projects across public and private cloud solutions
• Ability to work with large data sets for analysis and interpretation of business results
• Prioritizes work effectively, making tradeoffs as necessary
• Exercises good judgment when faced with risk, blockers, or tradeoffs
• Datae driven and manages to deliverables.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with other functions, such as finance, designers, product managers, data scientists, engineers, or SRE, to deliver drive projects to completion products
• Positive can-do partnership attitude while working with teams, cross-functional teams and cross-functional business units
• Must be detail oriented, self-organized, and capable of simultaneously tracking multiple issues of varying complex priorities
• Strong principles of financial analysis
• Exercises good judgment when faced with risk, blockers, or tradeoffs
• Leverage accurate documentation, best practices, and creative problem solvin

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