Description
Principal Engineer Cloud Platform Economics & Optimization
Syneos Health® is a leading fully-integrated life sciences services organization built to accelerate customer success. We partner with innovators at every point across the drug development and commercialization continuum, helping them navigate complexity, anticipate change and accelerate progress.
Every day we perform better because of how we work together, as one team, each the best at what we do. We bring together talented experts across a broad spectrum of business critical corporate functions. Every role plays an essential part in enabling our customers to achieve their goals. Our teams are agile, collaborative, and committed to delivering—for each other, for our customers, and ultimately for the people who rely on the services we support.
Discover what your 25,000 future colleagues already know:
Why Syneos Health
- We are passionate about developing our people, through career development and progression; supportive and engaged line management; technical and therapeutic area training; peer recognition and total rewards program.
- We are committed to building an inclusive culture – where you can authentically be yourself. Central to this is our purpose – Driven to Deliver – which captures the passion of our colleagues to show up each day and shape solutions that have the ability to dramatically impact someone’s life.
- We are continuously building the company we all want to work for and our customers want to work with. Why? Because we know that when we bring together smart colleagues from across the world, we can shape the future of healthcare, driving impact for customers and defining the pace of patient progress.
Job Responsibilities
Job Summary
The Principal Engineer, Cloud Economics & Optimization drives cloud cost optimization outcomes by translating FinOps policies, telemetry, and insights into measurable savings and sustained cost discipline. This role executes optimization strategies and savings initiatives across Azure, AWS, GCP and OCI partnering closely with Cloud Engineering, Operations, and Finance to improve cost visibility through tagging and cost telemetry, embed cost governance into platform and operational processes, and ensure cost actions are accurate and repeatable. The Principal Engineer tracks, validates, and reports savings realization against enterprise targets and supports MSP execution by strengthening the controls, workflows, and automation that turn cost signals into concrete actions.
Core Responsibilities
Execute FinOps policies, optimization strategies, and savings initiatives across cloud services, subscriptions/accounts, and products to deliver measurable cost reduction.
Identify optimization opportunities by analyzing cost signals (usage, rates, reservations/savings plans, idle/overprovisioned resources) and translate insights into actionable engineering and operational work.
Track, validate, and report savings realization against enterprise targets, including baselines, attribution, realized vs. forecast savings, and variance explanations.
Embed cost governance into platform and operational processes (intake, change, provisioning, architecture patterns), ensuring guardrails drive sustained cost discipline.
Drive automation for optimization actions (rightsizing workflows, schedule/stop-start, policy-based enforcement, and continuous detection/remediation) to reduce manual effort and improve consistency.
Additional Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Finance, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience); advanced degree preferred.
Strong cloud cost management experience across Azure and AWS, including cost allocation, forecasting, optimization levers, and service pricing/consumption drivers.
Ability to analyze cost signals and telemetry (usage trends, unit costs, anomalies, commitments, and idle resources) and translate findings into concrete, trackable actions.
Experience partnering with engineering teams on tagging standards, cost data quality, and automation (e.g., policy-based controls and repeatable optimization workflows).
Comfortable operating across engineering, operations, finance, and vendor/MSP stakeholders; able to influence priorities using data, standards, and clear reporting.
Strong communication skills, attention to detail, and control mindset to ensure optimization actions and savings reporting are accurate, repeatable, and audit ready.
Years of experience required
Minimum of 8 years of Cloud Engineering experience
Get to know Syneos Health
Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs, 95% of EMA Authorized Products and over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.
No matter what your role is, you’ll take the initiative and challenge the status quo with us in a highly competitive and ever-changing environment. Learn more about Syneos Health.
http://www.syneoshealth.com
Additional Information
Tasks, duties, and responsibilities as listed in this job description are not exhaustive. The Company, at its sole discretion and with no prior notice, may assign other tasks, duties, and job responsibilities. Equivalent experience, skills, and/or education will also be considered so qualifications of incumbents may differ from those listed in the Job Description. The Company, at its sole discretion, will determine what constitutes as equivalent to the qualifications described above. Further, nothing contained herein should be construed to create an employment contract. Occasionally, required skills/experiences for jobs are expressed in brief terms. Any language contained herein is intended to fully comply with all obligations imposed by the legislation of each country in which it operates, including the implementation of the EU Equality Directive, in relation to the recruitment and employment of its employees. The Company is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the provision of reasonable accommodations, when appropriate, to assist employees or applicants to perform the essential functions of the job.
Summary
The Principal Engineer, Cloud Economics & Optimization drives cloud cost optimization outcomes by translating FinOps policies, telemetry, and insights into measurable savings and sustained cost discipline. This role executes optimization strategies and savings initiatives across Azure, AWS, GCP and OCI partnering closely with Cloud Engineering, Operations, and Finance to improve cost visibility through tagging and cost telemetry, embed cost governance into platform and operational processes, and ensure cost actions are accurate and repeatable. The Principal Engineer tracks, validates, and reports savings realization against enterprise targets and supports MSP execution by strengthening the controls, workflows, and automation that turn cost signals into concrete actions.
