FinOps isn’t just about saving money — it’s about managing financial risk.

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I’m joined by Victoria Levy, FinOps Engineering Lead at Alteryx, to explore how FinOps teams can learn from security, prioritize cost optimization alongside engineering, and get serious about forecasting cloud and SaaS spend.

Victoria shares her journey from physics to FinOps, lessons learned working with engineering and product teams, and why organizations should stop calling it "cost optimization" and start treating it like a "risk to the budget."

You’ll hear:
- How to build a culture of accountability for cloud cost optimization
- What security teams do better than FinOps—and how to apply it
- How FinOps can approach SaaS spend like Snowflake and Datadog
- Real-world FinOps for AI: what tracking and optimization looks like today
- The role of anomaly detection, cost spikes, and "major incident" policies

If you're a FinOps practitioner, cloud engineer, or cost-conscious leader—this one’s for you!

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Quote of the Show:

• “ Security has done a great job of making sure that they are a priority, even though they might not be the purpose of the business, and that's something that FinOps can learn from.” - Victoria Levy

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriarlevy/ 
• Website: https://www.alteryx.com/ 

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 
• iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ 
• Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t 
• Transistor: finopsinaction.com 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFiveCloudCostEfficiency