Cloud Finance Lead

About the role

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution with over 130 years of financial experience and 22,000 partners serving the world’s most sophisticated clients. The Cloud Finance Lead role is strategic and involves driving financial planning, cost governance, forecasting accuracy, and analytical insight across the organization's cloud portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Lead monthly/quarterly cloud forecasting, variance analysis, and long-range planning across multiple cloud providers.

• Maintain and enhance cloud cost models, demand forecasting methodologies, and productivity assumptions.

• Partner with Technology Finance and CIO organizations to align cloud demand with enterprise budget constraints and strategic priorities.

• Translate complex cloud usage patterns into clear financial impacts for non-technical stakeholders.

• Build and maintain frameworks for cloud cost governance, including spend controls, tagging hygiene, and savings accountability.

• Identify cost-optimization opportunities such as reserved instances, rightsizing, storage optimization, and platform consolidation.

• Operationalize optimization recommendations with FinOps, Cloud Engineering, and Infrastructure teams.

• Ensure expense governance aligns with architectural policies and funding protocols.

• Evaluate cloud migration proposals and prepare financial business cases including: cost-to-migrate, run-rate cloud expense versus on-prem costs, TCO benefits, contract and licensing implications, and model sensitivities, risks, and capital/expense impacts.

• Partner with Procurement on cloud-related vendor negotiations and renewals.

• Create executive-level reporting on cloud KPIs, consumption trends, efficiency metrics, and spend drivers.

• Develop and maintain dashboards to support transparency across CIO organizations and Steering Committees.

• Monitor and report progress relative to cloud productivity targets and demand reduction initiatives.

• Partner with Cloud Engineering, Architecture, Security, and Product teams to understand upcoming migrations, platform requirements, and financial implications.

• Provide guidance to BU partners on cloud forecasting, cost drivers, and financial accountability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Engineering, or related field.

• 10-15+ years of experience in FP&A, Technology Finance, or related financial leadership roles.

• CPA, CFA, MBA, or FinOps Certification.

• Strong understanding of cloud economics (Azure, AWS, Snowflake, etc.) or a willingness to rapidly learn.

• Demonstrated ability to interpret complex technical concepts into financial outcomes.

• Advanced financial modeling, forecasting, and analytical skills.

• Experience interacting with senior leaders and influencing cross-functional decision-making.

Preferred

• Knowledge of FinOps principles and cloud governance frameworks.

• Experience with cloud reporting tools (e.g., Apptio/Cloudability/Flexera, native CSP cost management tools).

• Prior work supporting cloud migrations, modernization initiatives, or technology portfolios.