FinOps and Optimization Lead

The role is advertised with a London office base, but this is a global role with stakeholders and teams in different geographies in APAC, EMEA, and the US. You will be expected to attend the office in London at least 3 days a week.

At Informa, no two days and no two people are the same, and you'll find the freedom, opportunity and support of a fantastic community to make a real impact.

We’re an international business that connects specialists with knowledge, helping them to learn more, know more and do more through live and on demand events, digital and data-driven services and academic research.

We are home to over 10,000 colleagues across 30 countries and are a member of the UK’s FTSE 100 group of leading public companies. We’re thrilled to have earned the #3 spot in Glassdoor's Best Places to Work 2025 UK list, a recognition based solely on reviews by those who know us best - our current and previous colleagues.

In Global Support, we provide expert guidance and hands-on support to the Informa Group and Informa’s many business teams. Across tech, finance, legal, corporate development, HR, communications, operations and many other areas, we work collaboratively and flexibly to help our brands serve their customers and help the company succeed.

Here are Informa we are modernising our approach to provisioning services within the Cloud. We primarily use AWS as our cloud environment and have been using Terraform the deploy Infrastructure as code and standard tooling (New Relic, MS Defender, Apptio and CloudFlare) for some time to streamline the way we provision and secure cloud services.

We are now seeking to modernize this approach, and we are currently in the process of designing and building a New AWS organisation, control tower, and landing zones, as well as a new Azure landing Zone to better secure our workloads. This will be complemented with the adoption of new DevOps ways of working, increased automation, and an ecosystem of tools to allow us to move faster, enhance security, and deliver more consistent, predictable, and reliable services to our customers.

This is a time of change with a significant focus on delivering consistent Enterprise service so it's a great opportunity to join us to use and enhance your existing skills in a growing company. As part of being an employee within Technology in Informa you will have access to multiple training resources, and you will be given the opportunity to grow and enhance your technical and behavioural skills, in line with the capabilities that are needed within the business.

As our FinOps and Optimization Lead, you will help us with this modernisation. You will have ideally used Terraform to deliver infrastructure as code, but also someone who can help to build tooling standards, particularly in the FinOps arena where we want to shift to instrumentation as code as a key principle. You will have a strong knowledge of building repeatable services within AWS, that goes beyond just deployment and extends to a knowledge of configuring the right tools required to drive efficiency, and who has a passion for automation, and successfully driving predictable, and repeatable results that delight our customers.

This is a high profile role within a fantastic organisation with a great culture and will serve as the catalyst for delivering a consistent approach to Observability and monitoring within the context of a DevOps way of working. We also recognize the need to adopt Site Reliability Engineering principles in the future so there will be an opportunity to expand on your skills and develop Observability as a practice to drive reliability as a culture both within our own teams in Group Technology, but also extending to other divisions within the business.

In this role you will work closely with Informa divisions to develop strong processes to drive more effective management of cloud resources and assist in delivering an agile service management framework. You will identify process gaps, waste, lifecycle issues, and introduce automation and integrations between tooling to optimize the performance of Informa operations, and service management. A key aspect of the role is assisting with the design and delivery of a technology data model that provides structured and meaningful information to stakeholders to allow them to plan more effectively and optimize their services and applications.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the right candidate to take their existing skills and develop them within a highly federated business with a strong aspiration to gain increased return on their investment in the cloud, and to drive performance, and compliance across the divisions. Informa is a highly acquisitive organisation, so we are continually integrating other organizations, as a result there are opportunities to gain exposure to new technologies and new business models. As a business we will offer training and development to support this, as well as the opportunity to certify in FinOps, Service Management, and appropriate Cloud technologies.

Responsibilities

Development of a FinOps practice encompassing all divisions within Informa. (30%)

• Document and agree a target operating model for FinOps within Informa
• Define roles and responsibilities for all parties involved in FinOps across Informa
• Work closely with Finance to identify best practices for reporting, forecasting, and opportunity management
• Engage key stakeholders in the identification of candidates for FinOps champions.
• Operate a FinOps guild, share best practices, lessons learnt, and potential opportunities
• Build processes and optimize tooling to review Cloud Cost, and for working with key stakeholders to optimize investment
• Development of best practice guides, and standard targeted reports
• Maintain overall industry knowledge on latest trends, technologies to assist with continued development of the FinOps practice

Development, support, and maintenance of an ecosystem of tools to support FinOps and Operational processes (25%)

• Informa currently uses several tools to support its cloud infrastructure. There is a need for consolidation, and to build integration to support optimized operational processes, e.g., reporting, and Incident, and problem management
• Process maturity needs improvement - analysis, optimization, and automation of operational processes is a key deliverable of the role

Consultation (15%)

• Providing consultation across multiple functions within the business, advising on best practices for FinOps success
• Support architecture and project functions in designing infrastructure and applications for optimized costs, and operational processes

• Ensure delivered solutions meet/perform to forecasted cost and operational expectations.

Thought Leadership (20%)

• Provide thought leadership to fellow peers/customers across Finance business and technical project dimensions solving complex investment challenges
• Demonstrate forward thinking around how to further develop FinOps as a practice
• Advocate and define approaches for cost reduction initiatives, and the adoption of new and more cost-effective solutions, tooling, and operational processes
• Contribute to cloud strategy and governance across the organisation

Mentoring (10%)

• Act as the advocate, coach, and mentor to FinOps champions across the business
• Develop a cohesive FinOps framework, and coach and train key stakeholders across the business
• Assist with the definition and development of cloud reference architecture and frameworks to support the goals of FinOps, process optimization, and automation

Skills and Experience

• Experience of managing Cloud infrastructure, and costs at scale, ideally within but not limited to Amazon Web Services.
• Experience of managing and maintaining SAAS tooling, and integrations, working with vendors to optimize the tools, and adopt best practices.
• Strong understanding of cloud services, ideally AWS, but also Azure and ideally backed up with certification.
• Experience of executing successful FinOps practices, ideally at scale, certification would be of benefit.
• Knowledge and experience of using maturity and process analysis tools to identify opportunities for improvement, and taking these through execution is a must have
• Strong Service Management skills - ITIL, and Agile, with experience of integrating these.
• Ability to collaborate with, and influence stakeholders at all levels to gain alignment of business or technology goals.
• Ability to communicate clearly, concisely, and effectively to multiple stakeholders.
• Knowledge of developing strong repeatable processes and embedding these within multiple levels in the business.
• Ability to generate high quality best practice documents, and guidance for use at all levels within the technology teams and the business.
• Demonstrable consultative skills with experience of delivery in fast moving environments which may be subject to varying and changing priorities.
  
  

An ideal candidate will have extensive experience in Cloud Operations or DevOps and will have a strong understanding of financial management in the cloud at an Enterprise scale. In addition to this we are looking for someone who has experience of building and optimizing operational processes to drive the performance of Informa’s DevOps teams by introducing the right levels of automation, tooling, and integrations. Generation of a reporting framework is a key part of this role. The position requires strong leadership and team-building skills and must be able to collaborate effectively with a group of high-performing architects, engineers & managers that work within Informa’s broader operating divisions. You should be able to provide evidence where you have been successful in a similar role and be willing to provide examples at the interview.

We are interested in candidates who have the following qualifications.

• FinOps certified practitioner.
• AWS certified cloud practitioner.
• ITIL Foundation.
  
  

We work hard to make sure Life at Informa is rewarding, supportive and enjoyable for everyone. Here’s some of what you can expect when you join us. But don’t just take our word for it – see what our colleagues have to say at LifeAt.Informa.com

Our benefits include;

• Freedom & flexibility: colleagues rate us highly for the flexibility and trust they receive and most of us balance time in the office with time working remotely
• Great community: a welcoming culture with in-person and online social events, our fantastic Walk the World charity day and active diversity and inclusion networks •
• Broader impact: take up to four days per year to volunteer, with charity match funding available too.
• Career opportunity: the opportunity to develop your career with bespoke training and learning, mentoring platforms and on-demand access to thousands of courses on LinkedIn Learning. When it’s time for the next step, we encourage and support internal job moves.
• Time out: 25 days annual leave, rising to 27 days after two years, plus a birthday leave day and the chance to work from (almost!) anywhere for up to four weeks a year
• A flexible range of personal benefits to choose from, plus company funded private medical cover
• A ShareMatch scheme that allows you to become an Informa shareholder with free matching shares
• Strong wellbeing support through EAP assistance, mental health first aiders, a healthy living subsidy, access to health apps and more
• Recognition for great work, with global awards and kudos programmes
• As an international company, the chance to collaborate with teams around the world

We’re not solely focused on a checklist of skills. We champion energy and ambition and look for colleagues who will roll their sleeves up, join in and help make things happen. If it sounds like a match and you have most – although not all – of the skills and experience listed, we welcome your application.

At Informa, you'll find inclusive experiences and environments where all perspectives and backgrounds are welcomed. As part of this approach and our diversity and inclusion commitments, we are also formally an Equal Opportunities Employer. This means we base decisions on relevant qualifications and merit and do not discriminate on the basis of key characteristics and statuses, including all of those protected by law.

Ask us or see our website for full information.