VP FinOps

Become an everyday champion — and build a career where your impact fuels financial progress.

What We Do

CardWorks Financial Group is a diversified financial services platform building ethical solutions across credit, lending, and the full customer lifecycle. Through our family of companies, CardWorks Financial Group tackles the complex challenges that larger financial institutions leave behind. We’re embedded throughout the credit card ecosystem as a lender, servicer, and merchant acquirer.

Who We Are

• Merrick Bank: The bank that builds
• CardWorks Servicing: One partner, total performance
• Carson Smithfield: Resolution with respect

With nearly 40 years of operating history, our track record is solid: disciplined in downturns and built to accelerate in recovery. The CardWorks Financial Group companies take precise approach in complex markets, as a top three non-prime focused general purpose card issuer and a top fifteen U.S. merchant acquirer. 

Our team tackles the industry’s most complex credit and payment challenges. And we believe that excellent work starts with a team that feels supported, respected, and empowered to grow.

CardWorks Servicing, LLC provides end-to end operational servicing functions for credit cards, secured cards, and installment loans.  We service consumer and small business loans across the credit spectrum and offers backup servicing and due diligence services to capital providers and trustees.

Founded in 1997, Merrick Bank is an FDIC®-insured financial institution headquartered in South Jordan, Utah, with over $10 billion in assets. A wholly owned subsidiary of CardWorks Financial Group, Merrick Bank serves roughly five million cardmembers and more than 100,000 merchant customers, offering credit cards, recreational loans, deposit accounts, merchant services and bank sponsorships to consumers and businesses.

Carson Smithfield, LLC provides a variety of post-charge-off debt recovery services, including digital self-service, IVR, live agent, and external agency management.

Position Summary:

The Vice President of FinOps leads CardWorks Servicing’s technology financial operations practice, driving accountability, predictability, and disciplined optimization across the enterprise’s full technology spend — including cloud (AWS, Azure, and emerging platforms), SaaS and software licensing, infrastructure, and supporting tooling. Reporting to the SVP of Enterprise Architecture, this executive owns the strategy, governance, tooling, and team that align engineering velocity with cost-aware decision making. The VP, FinOps partners closely with Finance, Procurement, Enterprise Architecture, and engineering leadership to forecast technology consumption, negotiate enterprise commitments (AWS Enterprise Discount Program, Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and SaaS contracts), and embed unit economics into the way CardWorks builds and operates its servicing platforms. The role establishes and runs the FinOps Center of Excellence and ensures CardWorks operates its full technology footprint at scale efficiently, securely, and in alignment with industry-standard cost optimization frameworks.

Essential Functions:

• Define and execute the enterprise FinOps strategy and operating model spanning cloud (AWS, Azure, and emerging platforms), SaaS, software licensing, and supporting infrastructure, including showback/chargeback frameworks, budget governance, and unit economic models (cost per cardholder, cost per transaction, cost per environment).
• Build, lead, and grow the FinOps Center of Excellence, including a team of cloud financial analysts, cost engineers, SaaS license analysts, and tooling specialists.
• Forecast monthly and annual spend across cloud, SaaS, and infrastructure; manage variance to budget; and report cost performance to executive leadership.
• Negotiate and steward enterprise commitments across providers — including AWS, Private Pricing Agreements, Savings Plans, and Reserved Instances; Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, Azure Reservations, and Hybrid Benefit; and SaaS multi-year contracts — in partnership with vendor account teams and Procurement.
• Establish and enforce mandatory tagging, account and subscription structure, and resource hierarchy standards in partnership with Enterprise Architecture, ensuring every dollar of technology spend is attributable to a business owner, application, and environment.
• Drive cost optimization initiatives across compute, storage, data, networking, and SaaS — including rightsizing, idle resource elimination, storage tier optimization, license harvesting, and architectural remediation — partnering with engineering and product teams to address inefficiencies at the source.
• Build executive dashboards and KPIs covering cloud, SaaS, and total technology cost, and deliver monthly and quarterly business reviews to Technology and Finance leadership.
• Stand up automated anomaly detection and proactive alerting across providers on cost spikes, unused or orphaned resources, license under-utilization, and policy drift — including AWS Service Control Policies, S3 Object Lock, MFA Delete, Azure Policy, and Azure Blueprints guardrails.
• Champion FinOps culture across engineering and product through training, scorecards, and embedded engagement with squads to drive cost-aware architecture and design decisions across all technology layers.
• Partner with Information Security, Risk, and Compliance to ensure financial governance aligns with regulatory expectations applicable to a federally regulated card servicer (FFIEC, GLBA, PCI-DSS, SOX).
• Lead vendor and SaaS lifecycle management, including license rationalization, contract renewal strategy, multi-vendor negotiation, and rationalization of overlapping tooling.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Finance, or related field required; MBA or advanced technical degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in cloud engineering, enterprise architecture, IT finance, or technology leadership, with deep hands-on experience across multiple public cloud providers (AWS, Azure) at enterprise scale.
• 5+ years of demonstrated leadership in FinOps, cloud financial management, or technology cost optimization, including direct ownership of multi-million-dollar technology spend across cloud, SaaS, and infrastructure.
• Proven track record negotiating and managing enterprise commitments including AWS Enterprise Discount Programs (EDPs), Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances/Reservations, and SaaS multi-year contracts.
• Prior experience building and leading FinOps teams, Cloud Centers of Excellence, or Enterprise Architecture functions at financial services, fintech, or similarly regulated organizations strongly preferred.
• FinOps Foundation certification (FinOps Certified Practitioner or Professional) preferred.
• Cloud certifications across multiple providers preferred

Summary of Qualifications:

• Deep working expertise across AWS core services (EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, CloudTrail, KMS, CloudWatch, Systems Manager) with the ability to translate technical architecture decisions into financial impact.
• Demonstrated mastery of cloud billing constructs: AWS Organizations, Consolidated Billing, Cost Allocation Tags, Cost and Usage Reports (CUR); Azure Management Groups, Subscriptions, Cost Management + Billing, and tag governance.
• Hands-on experience modeling, forecasting, and remediating large-scale storage cost issues, including multi-hundred-terabyte S3 storage class optimization, Azure storage tier alignment, lifecycle policy design, and bulk data migration or deletion at petabyte scale.
• Strong command of cloud Well-Architected Frameworks, with a proven ability to operationalize the Cost Optimization pillar across heterogeneous workloads.
• Track record of producing executive-grade cost models, briefings, and interactive cost calculators that translate complex consumption patterns across cloud and SaaS into clear business decisions.
• Familiarity with SaaS spend management practices, license rationalization, and contract negotiation across major enterprise vendors.
• Excellent cross-functional leadership skills with a track record of partnering across Engineering, Finance, Procurement, Risk, and Compliance.
• Strong analytical mindset; comfort translating raw billing and consumption data into actionable insights and unit economics.
• Familiarity with regulated financial services environments and the governance expectations of FFIEC, GLBA, PCI-DSS, and SOX.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with comfort presenting to C-level leadership and the Board.

Our Employee Value Proposition

• Competitive Pay, including a Bonus Target or Variable Pay Incentive Program 
• Benefits Package -Medical, Dental, and Vision (plus much more) 
• 401(k) Plan with Company Match 
• Short- & Long-Term Disability 
• Wellness Programs 
• Group Life and AD&D Insurance 
• Paid Vacation, Sick Days and bank Holidays 
• Employee Engagement Activities including Employee Appreciation Day, DEI Employee Resource Groups, Corporate Social Responsibility, Service Recognition

We offer a total rewards package comprised of a competitive base rate of pay, variable pay incentive programs based on the role, and a comprehensive benefit suite.  Offered rates of pay are determined based on job-related knowledge, relevant experience, skills, certifications, and geographic location.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to age, race, color, sex, or gender identity/expression (including pregnancy, childbirth, transgender status, or sexual orientation), religion or creed, ancestry, citizenship, national origin, disability, military or veteran status, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or retaliation. Employment decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs. Everyone is welcome here, and we hire based on your ability to do the job, not any protected characteristics.

If you need help or reasonable accommodation during the application or hiring process, please let your TA Partner know.