Confidential mandate
Board Adviser — Cloud FinOps, IT Services
Planned Hiring / New
An IT-services group wants independent guidance on cloud FinOps as managed-cloud growth exposes margin leakage, unclear customer accountability and inconsistent engineering incentives across major accounts.
The mandate
Directors repeatedly ask why managed-cloud revenue growth is not translating into predictable contribution margin. Delivery attributes leakage to contracts, sales cites volatile consumption, and finance cannot yet separate unavoidable workload growth from weak engineering discipline.
The adviser will use two days monthly for account-economics review and a joint committee session, including quarterly Finance and Technology Committee attendance. Urgent commentary on a large managed-service bid is due within three business days after receipt of a complete pack.
The nine-month term concludes with approval of the next operating plan and incentive design. One three-month extension may be authorised by both committee chairs; no line authority, account-control power, executive responsibility or bid-approval vote accompanies the role.
The adviser may hold three non-competing appointments. Engagements with a direct managed-cloud rival, hyperscaler, optimisation vendor or major customer procurement team must be declared, and any supplier-funded incentive is disqualifying.
Why the board wants this voice
Current reporting starts at aggregate cloud spend and arrives too late to shape architecture or commercials. The board wants an operator who can connect workload design, contractual accountability and account-level margin. Independence from cloud-volume incentives is essential to that challenge.
What you will own
- Challenge the cost-allocation model for shared platforms, commitments, support labour and customer-specific tooling.
- Test contract clauses governing consumption growth, optimisation duties and savings ownership.
- Press leaders to separate gross cloud resale from value-added managed-service margin.
- Shape engineering incentives around durable unit-cost reduction rather than one-off reservation purchases.
- Examine bid models for workload volatility, migration debt and observability effort.
- Guide committee questions on hyperscaler concentration and commitment risk.
- Advise on a board scorecard linking account economics to technical actions and commercial remedies.
Candidate qualifications
- 18–22 years in cloud services, technology finance or managed-services leadership.
- Direct accountability for FinOps across a multi-account or multi-customer cloud estate.
- Evidence of improving managed-cloud margin through engineering and contract changes, not accounting reclassification.
- Strong grasp of cloud commitments, allocation, observability, unit metrics and service-pricing mechanics.
- Experience presenting account economics and concentration decisions to board committees.
- Independence from hyperscaler rebates and optimisation-vendor referral arrangements.
Non-negotiables
- Two Pune days monthly and quarterly attendance at both sponsoring committees.
- Three-business-day response on complete material-bid packs.
- Disclosure of cloud-provider, optimisation-vendor, rival and major-customer relationships.
- No executive direction of delivery teams or authority to approve bids.
- 49 words maximum. Which managed-cloud portfolio did you improve, and what unit metric demonstrated that margin gain was operationally real?
- 49 words maximum. What hyperscaler, vendor, rival or customer relationships must be disclosed before you review account economics?
- 49 words maximum. Can you reserve two days monthly and return advice on a complete material bid within three business days?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.