Staff Engineer, FinOps San Francisco, CA

About the role

The FinOps Engineering function at Amplitude sits at the intersection of engineering, finance, and product. Our team owns the data, tooling, and practices that make our cloud and vendor spend both efficient and transparent. As a Staff FinOps Engineer, you will own the technical backbone that powers Amplitude's cost visibility across major vendors (cloud hosting, observability, AI/ML, and core SaaS).

Responsibilities

• Own the technical backbone that powers Amplitude's cost visibility across major vendors (cloud hosting, observability, AI/ML, and core SaaS)
• Partner directly with Engineering, Finance, and Product to turn that visibility into real savings and better decisions
• Design and build systems, roll up your sleeves to implement optimizations, and lead cross-functional initiatives, reviews, and long-range planning
• Develop dashboards, scorecards, alerts, bots, and internal tools that make it easy for service owners to understand their spend, identify waste, and track progress against optimization goals
• Define cost guardrails and best practices, and embed them into infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and review processes
• Collaborate with FP&A and vendor owners to forecast short- and long-term spend, model the impact of new features and infrastructure changes, and reconcile actuals against forecasts
• Run reviews, office hours, and targeted trainings to help teams interpret cost data, reason about trade-offs, and incorporate cost as a first-class engineering and product constraint
• Instrument and measure everything, including defining KPIs and building telemetry around cost programs (e.g., $ saved, unit economics, ROI, impact on performance/reliability) to ensure we're shipping changes that actually move the business
• Stay current on cloud pricing changes, vendor offerings, and FinOps best practices, and bring pragmatic, opinionated guidance back into our architecture, contracts, and tooling

Requirements

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in FinOps, SRE, Platform, or Infrastructure engineering, with a track record of reducing spend and improving unit economics in a modern cloud environment (AWS preferred)
• Comfortable in code as in spreadsheets, writing production-quality code (Python, TypeScript, or similar), building data pipelines and dashboards, and fluent with financial concepts (budgets, forecasts, ROI, unit economics) to partner credibly with Finance
• Experience working with cost & usage data (e.g., AWS CUR, SaaS vendor exports, observability billing data) and modeling it into schemas and metrics that make sense to engineers, leadership, and Finance
• Personal experience implementing cost optimizations, changing infrastructure, configurations, or code to reduce spend
• High ownership and autonomy, comfortable owning ambiguous, cross-functional problems end-to-end, from framing and alignment through technical design, implementation, rollout, and ongoing iteration
• Ability to balance program management with engineering depth, driving a roadmap, aligning stakeholders, and tracking outcomes, while also diving into details like Terraform modules, Kubernetes manifests, or Datadog/SaaS billing settings
• Clear communication with diverse audiences, explaining complex technical and financial trade-offs to engineers, PMs, Finance partners, and executives in a concise, data-driven, and actionable manner
• Care about reliability and developer experience, optimizing cost without sacrificing performance, availability, or developer velocity, and thoughtful about where to introduce friction vs. where to automate
• Curiosity and fast-learning, enjoying picking up new domains and applying that knowledge quickly to make better decisions

Qualifications

• Fluent in SQL and analytics tools
• Strong data and analytics instincts
• Experience with Terraform, Kubernetes, and Datadog/SaaS billing settings
• Understanding of cloud pricing models and vendor offerings
• Experience with AWS preferred

Skills

• FinOps, SRE, Platform, or Infrastructure engineering
• Production-quality code (Python, TypeScript, or similar)
• Data pipelines and dashboards
• Financial concepts (budgets, forecasts, ROI, unit economics)
• Cost data systems
• Cost optimizations
• Self-service FinOps tooling
• Cost guardrails and best practices
• Cloud pricing changes, vendor offerings, and FinOps best practices

Benefits

Based on legislation in various locations, the role is eligible for equity, benefits, and other forms of compensation. Details include:

• Colorado: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• New York City: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• San Francisco Bay Area of California: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• California outside of the San Francisco Bay Area: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• Washington state: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• Washington only: unlimited PTO, 10 to 13 holidays annually (will vary), medical dental and vision PPO and CDHP plans

A company-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan is also available.

Pay

Based on legislation in various locations, the salary range is as follows:

• Colorado: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• New York City: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• San Francisco Bay Area of California: $220,000 - $331,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• California outside of the San Francisco Bay Area: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• Washington state: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)
• Washington only: $198,000 - $299,000 total target cash (inclusive of bonus or commission)

A company-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan is also available.

Schedule

Not specified.

Company

Amplitude is the leading AI analytics platform, helping over 4,700 customers—including Atlassian, Burger King, NBCUniversal, and Square—build better products and digital experiences. Ranked #1 across multiple categories in G2’s Winter 2026 Report, Amplitude is the best-in-class solution for product, data, and marketing teams. Learn more at amplitude.com.

Company Commitment

Amplitude believes that diversity enables the creation of better products, improves the ability to solve complex problems, and drives more powerful solutions. We strive to create an environment of inclusion—one focused on psychological safety, empathy, and human connection—that will allow employees of all backgrounds to thrive.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by law.