Team Leader - Enterprise Cloud Services (FinOps)

Company Description

Why Wellmark: We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today! 

Why Wellmark Technology? Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work. 

Job Description

In this formal leadership role, you will lead a high‑performing FinOps‑focused cloud team responsible for maximizing the value, efficiency, operational health, and financial transparency of the organization’s cloud ecosystem. This role emphasizes cloud financial operations alongside strong cloud operational discipline, ensuring the organization is getting the most value from its cloud platforms and environments while maintaining accountability for annual cloud spend. You will oversee the ongoing operation, optimization, and reliability of cloud platforms, balancing cost, performance, availability, and security, and ensuring cloud services are operated in a scalable, resilient, and well‑governed manner.

You will partner closely with system owners, product owners, solution architects, and technology leaders to evaluate cloud usage and architectural decisions across ecosystems and align spend to business outcomes. A core responsibility for this role is enabling system owners (Directors) with the tooling, data, and insights needed to actively manage their cloud budgets, transitioning from soft budgets to clear financial ownership and accountability. 

This role develops people, fosters a collaborative and inclusive culture, and ensures the team operates effectively within an agile framework, while bringing a finance‑ and analytics‑driven perspective that complements existing technical leadership. As a key member of the enterprise cloud leadership team, this leader will help shape and execute a forward‑looking roadmap. 

Qualifications

Preferred:  

• Background in finance, analytics, cloud financial operations, or technology‑adjacent financial leadership, with the ability to operate effectively in a cloud engineering environment 
• Experience owning, managing, or influencing large‑scale technology or cloud budgets 
• Strong analytical mindset with experience using data and tooling (e.g., Power BI or similar analytics platforms) to drive financial and operational decision‑making 
• Ability to evaluate cloud platforms and environments from a value, cost‑benefit, and optimization perspective, not solely technical design 
• Experience working in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, finance) 
• Familiarity with FinOps concepts, cloud cost governance, and usage‑based pricing models 
• Vendor‑specific certifications (preferred, not required):  
• Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert 
• Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator Associate 
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional 
• AWS Certified Security – Specialty 
• Vendor‑neutral and governance‑focused certifications (preferred):  
• FinOps Certified Practitioner 
• Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) 
• Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) 
• CompTIA Cloud+ 
• ITIL 4 Foundation 

Required: 

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or related field, or direct and applicable work experience. 
• Minimum 7 years of experience in cloud engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure roles. 
• Informal leadership experience typically gained through project management or by coaching/mentoring others by providing guidance and feedback to help an employee to strengthen their knowledge and skills. 
• Experience leading teams in an agile software development environment. Experience with frameworks in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), supporting Agile Release Trains and aligning designs with Lean-Agile principles. 
• Demonstrated ability to build product roadmaps.  
• Hands on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP services and architecture.  
• Strong understanding of CI/CD infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform, CloudFormation) and container orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes).  
• Strong collaborat