Senior DevSecOps / Cloud Governance Consultant

About the role

Our partner is looking for a Senior DevSecOps / Cloud Governance Consultant based in the United States. This is an eight-week, hands-on consulting engagement focused on strengthening cloud governance, FinOps, security, and financial accountability within a large-scale Azure environment. You will assess existing practices and translate strategic goals into practical governance solutions that can be implemented and maintained. The role combines deep technical execution with cross-functional consulting across cloud infrastructure, finance, architecture, security, and data teams. You will design Azure management structures, policies, tagging standards, and governance-as-code workflows using Terraform and GitHub Actions. You will also identify and quantify cloud optimization opportunities, connecting technical improvements to measurable financial outcomes. A key part of the role is coaching client teams through paired implementation, knowledge sharing, and reusable technical patterns. The goal is to leave behind working solutions, clear documentation, and a sustainable operating model that enables the client to manage and evolve its cloud environment independently.

Accountabilities

• Assess existing Azure governance, financial management, resource organization, tagging, policy, and compliance practices to identify gaps, risks, and improvement opportunities.
• Facilitate cross-functional workshops and discussions to establish practical tagging standards, including required tags, ownership, permitted values, inheritance, and exception processes.
• Design and implement Azure Management Group hierarchies that enable consistent governance across enterprise subscriptions and environments.
• Design, author, and deploy Azure Policy definitions and initiatives supporting governance, security, compliance, and cost-management objectives.
• Establish governance as code using Terraform and GitHub Actions, including deployment workflows, version control, and promotion processes.
• Implement appropriate Azure Policy effects and rollout strategies, including audit, deny, remediation, and exemption approaches.
• Develop compliance reporting and remediation processes that identify non-compliant resources and establish clear ownership and resolution paths.
• Evaluate Azure Cost Management practices, including budgets, alerts, thresholds, approval processes, allocation models, and financial reporting.
• Conduct cloud optimization reviews covering utilization, right-sizing, reservations and commitments, idle or orphaned resources, regions, SKUs, and other efficiency opportunities.
• Quantify optimization opportunities using defensible methodologies and communicate expected financial impact to both technical and finance stakeholders.
• Develop practical approaches for showback, cost attribution, shared-cost allocation, and resource ownership.
• Evaluate governance and financial-management approaches across other cloud platforms and provide strategic recommendations where relevant.
• Create reusable governance patterns, technical standards, implementation guidance, playbooks, and documentation that can be extended beyond the initial engagement.
• Establish sustainable processes for maintaining tagging, policy, governance, compliance, and financial-management standards over time.
• Work closely with client cloud administrators through paired implementation, technical coaching, and knowledge transfer.
• Present findings, recommendations, and future-state opportunities to technical leadership and executive stakeholders.
• Develop a FinOps maturity roadmap and prioritized backlog for future phases of the cloud governance transformation.
• Produce runbooks, handoff materials, and operational documentation that enable the client team to independently manage and extend delivered solutions.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in cloud engineering, cloud architecture, DevSecOps, platform engineering, FinOps, cloud governance, or a related discipline.
• Deep hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure governance in enterprise environments.
• Strong experience designing and implementing Azure Management Group hierarchies and organizing enterprise Azure subscriptions.
• Advanced experience with Azure Policy, including custom definitions, initiatives, assignments, audit and deny effects, exemptions, remediation, and compliance reporting.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code experience, particularly with Terraform, including building governance deployment workflows rather than simply consuming existing pipelines.
• Strong experience with GitHub Actions and modern Git-based development and deployment practices.
• Solid understanding of FinOps principles and practical cloud financial management.
• Experience creating cloud tagging and resource-organization standards supporting ownership, cost allocation, reporting, and governance.
• Experience with Azure Cost Management, billing data, cost allocation, showback/chargeback concepts, and cloud financial reporting.
• Experience identifying and quantifying cloud optimization opportunities such as right-sizing, idle resources, reservations, commitments, and utilization improvements.
• Ability to connect technical optimization findings to measurable financial impact and clearly explain the methodology behind financial estimates.
• Strong understanding of integrating cloud governance and policy controls into provisioning, deployment, and operational processes.
• Ability to independently assess complex environments, identify gaps, and develop practical remediation and implementation plans.
• Strong consulting and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to facilitate discussions, influence decision-makers, make recommendations, and navigate competing priorities.
• Confidence communicating with cloud engineers and administrators as well as finance leaders, infrastructure executives, architects, and other senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to independently manage an engagement with multiple parallel workstreams, priorities, and deliverables.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation and executive-ready recommendations.
• A collaborative, coach-and-contribute mindset with a genuine commitment to leaving client teams more capable and self-sufficient.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Google Cloud organization policies and labeling standards, AWS governance and cost management, ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management or similar platforms, Power BI, and cloud financial reporting.
• FinOps Certified Practitioner (FCP) or a comparable FinOps certification is a plus.
• Experience developing cost models for AI, machine learning, or token-based cloud consumption is advantageous.
• Experience in highly regulated or security-sensitive environments is preferred.
• Experience creating enterprise cloud governance standards, technical playbooks, reusable implementation patterns, and operating models is valuable.
• Previous experience leading consulting engagements involving cloud transformation, governance, FinOps, or platform engineering is a strong advantage.

Benefits

• Fully remote consulting engagement available anywhere in the United States.
• Flexible working hours designed to support a distributed, remote-first environment.
• Approximately eight weeks of focused project work, with potential opportunities for follow-on engagements.
• Independent contractor (1099) arrangement.
• Sponsored and supported learning and professional-development opportunities.
• Opportunity to work directly with cloud infrastructure and IT finance teams on a high-impact enterprise transformation.
• Hands-on exposure to Azure governance, FinOps, cloud optimization, Infrastructure as Code, and enterprise operating models.
• Collaborative coach-and-contribute environment focused on knowledge sharing and long-term client capability.
• Opportunity to influence cloud governance strategy while delivering tangible technical solutions and measurable financial value.
• U.S. residency required.
• Must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.
• Must be able to successfully complete a background check.