Sr. Business Planning Manager - Cloud FinOps

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

Overview:

Visa’s Technology Organization is a community of problem solvers and innovators reshaping the future of commerce.   We operate the world’s most sophisticated processing networks capable of handling more than 65k secure transactions a second across 80M merchants, 15k Financial Institutions, and billions of everyday people.   While working with us you’ll get to work on influencing strategy for all the third party vendors used in Visa Operations that powers all core and distributed systems across the enterprise.

The Opportunity:

As a Senior Business Planning Manager in the Demand Management group, you will lead the Cloud FinOps function, overseeing cloud costs and consumption across 10 entities, including Visa, as well as future M&A entities. You will identify and implement cost optimization opportunities across the cloud footprint, track resource utilization, and support the development and execution of Visa Cloud’s multi-year technology strategy and budget. You will partner with engineering, architecture, and finance teams across Visa and its M&A entities to implement optimizations and align executives on cloud and AI strategy and governance. You will also help define AI governance, including usage and cost tracking, efficiency analysis, and daily and monthly reporting on costs and key drivers. This role offers broad exposure to multiple teams, systems, tools, and data sources.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Business Planning Manager to lead Cloud FinOps and implement cloud and AI cost management and optimization strategies. The role will focus on improving resource utilization, tracking costs, identifying savings opportunities, and measuring AI usage across the organization. You will apply your knowledge of major cloud platforms—including AWS, GCP, Azure, and Databricks—as well as AI tools and large language model providers, while partnering with technology teams to monitor and optimize resources across platforms. You will develop a strong understanding of the business, strategic direction, organizational structure, and key vendor partnerships. You will also define success for IT financial efficiency and cost transparency programs by establishing key metrics and developing consumption optimization initiatives.

Essential Functions:

• Lead the Public cloud technology lane portfolio end-to-end from a Cloud FinOps demand management perspective
• Develop cloud consumption views and growth forecasts, and drive IT financial efficiency across all public cloud providers, including managed services.
• Cost Analysis: Analyze cloud usage and cost trends, identify cost drivers, and provide actionable recommendations for cost optimization.
• Optimization strategies: Develop and implement strategies for optimizing cloud resources, including right-sizing of compute, storage, database, and other services, utilizing cost-effective services.
• Break down global public cloud expenses by service to identify infrastructure cost reduction opportunities and improvements to tools and processes.
• Drive technology purchases by writing business justifications and executing them according to Visa procurement principles. Provide IT decision support, ensuring that both technical and business concerns are fully considered.
• Influence technology decisions through business intelligence and data analytics and ensure all aspects of technology (strategy, financials and KPI) are covered in the analysis.
• Budget Management: Work closely with project teams to establish and manage cloud budgets, ensuring alignment with organization OKRs, implement effective cost management and optimization strategies. Develop and maintain financial models for cloud cost allocation. Set and Track budgets as per business unit requirements (by Account, by Project, by cost centers etc.).
• Forecast cloud and AI usage and costs for existing workloads and new projects or applications moving from on-premises data centers to the cloud, providing insights for budget planning and resource allocation.
• Vendor Negotiation: Engage with Cloud service providers to negotiate favorable pricing and contractual terms to optimize costs.
• Policy Development: Establish and enforce cloud & AI cost management policies, guidelines, and best practices across organization.
• Continuous Monitoring: Track cloud and AI costs in real time and proactively address anomalies and deviations from budget expectations.
• Reporting: Generate regular reports and dashboards to communicate cost-related insights, trends, and recommendations to management and relevant stakeholders.
• Run SQL scripts to extract utilization data and perform analytics to provide infrastructure cost optimization solutions
• Assist product owners with execution of technology strategy, keeping a view of the operating expense impact of key decisions
• Partner with product owners to identify expense reduction opportunities and create plans and tracking to ensure execution.
• Review demand for new purchases with product owners, validate that the demand aligns with technology strategy and present analytics to compare Visa’s usage of similar products within the category
• Stay updated: Keep abreast of industry trends, new cloud services, and pricing models to ensure the organization remains cost effective and competitive.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 8 or more years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor Degree or at least 5 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 2 years of work experience with a PhD.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 9 or more years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor Degree or 7 or more relevant years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 3 or more years of experience with a PhD.
• Concentration in Management Information Systems, Technology Management, Computer Science, Finance Business Analytics or a related technical discipline and/or an MS/MBA is a plus.
• Experience in financial analysis, preferably in a technology or cloud computing environment.
• Proven experience in cloud cost management and optimization.
• Strong understanding of cloud pricing, cost structures, and billing models.
• Proficient in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.• Proficiency in data analysis tools and software.
• Certification in Cloud FinOps or related field.
• Experience with cloud cost management tools.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel, Powerpoint and other Microsoft Office applications.
• In-depth understanding of the business, technology infrastructure, IT financial management frameworks, and key vendor licensing methodologies.
• Extensive experience in data analysis and modeling to provide business intelligence support for Technology leadership.
• Proficiency with SQL queries, data analysis and visualization tools a must.
• Experience in infrastructure cost optimization techniques
• Must have technical background to understand the key infrastructure products and understand the core concepts behind “running IT like a business”.
• Solid analytical and problem-solving skills, ability to think strategically.
• Understanding of Public cloud deployments and IT frameworks preferred.
• Must have prior experience in creating cost transparency and cost clarity programs for CIO/CTO office
• Ability to conduct research such as market size and trends, competitive analysis.
• Ability to collect and analyze relevant quantitative and qualitative data sets.
• Strong communication skills including written, oral, and presentation abilities.
• Business and technical writing skills, executive level presentation skills.
• Organizational agility and the ability to influence stakeholders and various levels of senior leadership.

Information for US Applicants

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer