Cloud cost engineering & FinOps
Cloud cost is an engineering problem. We treat it like one.
CostOps is a senior AWS cost-optimization practice. We negotiate the contract, tune the commitments, and fix the architecture behind the bill, then leave your team the guardrails to keep it down. Fixed price, scoped up front.
Why teams hire us
The bill has two owners. We work for both.
Cloud spend sits between finance and engineering, so cost work only sticks when it makes sense to both sides of the table.
If you own the P&L
For most software companies, cloud is a top-three cost of revenue, and one of the few that can shrink without cutting headcount or product.
An engagement is a fixed price against a defined scope, and the result is auditable in the one place that matters: next quarter's AWS invoice. No new vendor contract, no seat licenses, no tooling subscription that outlives its usefulness.
If you own the bill
We're engineers, not analysts. The work arrives as pull requests, Terraform, and commitment models you can rerun, not a slide deck that becomes your backlog.
We build on what's already in your stack, work inside your repos and your AWS org, and document as we go, so your team runs the next cost review without us.
What we do
Rates, commitments, architecture.
Savings come from three places: the rates you pay, the commitments you make, and the architecture you run. We work all three.
AWS cost audits
A full read of your AWS org: idle capacity, oversized compute, unmanaged storage, retention overrun, untagged spend. Findings ranked by dollars, not by count.
Architecture for cost
The handful of design decisions driving most of the bill: data transfer, storage tiering, log ingestion, the wrong compute primitive. We redesign them and help ship the fix.
Contract & EDP negotiation
Enterprise Discount Programs, private pricing, and marketplace commitments, negotiated with your usage data in hand. We see a lot of AWS contracts, so we know what good terms look like.
Commitment management
Savings Plan and Reserved Instance strategy sized to real usage and rebalanced as it changes, so you stop paying on-demand rates for steady-state load.
FinOps operations
Cost allocation, showback, tagging governance, forecasting, and anomaly response, built on your existing stack and run as a practice your team owns, not another vendor tool.
Unit economics
Cost per customer, per feature, per environment. The numbers that turn "the bill went up" into a margin conversation your CFO can act on.
How we work
Three phases. Priced up front.
Most clients start with the first two and decide on the third once they've watched the savings land on an actual invoice.
Scope
Read-only access to your AWS org and a ranked assessment of where the money is, including your rate and commitment position. Scope and price are fixed before any work starts.
Quick wins & cleanup
The fast, high-ROI fixes: idle resources, rightsizing, commitment strategy, tagging, retention. Savings you can see on the next bill, delivered as PRs your team reviews.
Architectural improvements
The structural work: data transfer, storage tiering, and the right compute primitives. Planned alongside your product roadmap, so the bill stays smaller as you grow.
Team
Who you'll work with.
CostOps is a senior team of consulting specialists. Every engagement is led by a principal engineer who has run production cloud at scale, with bench specialists joining when the work calls for them.
Caleb Hurd
Founder · Principal cost engineerDoes AWS cost optimization at Fortune 500 scale every working day. Started CostOps to deliver the same work fixed-price, for companies that want the fix without a year-long engagement.
Specialist bench
Senior engineers, per engagementPlatform, data, and infrastructure engineers we've worked alongside for years. When a bill needs a specific skill set, you get the right person for it, not whoever happens to be free.
Your team
In your account, with your peopleWe work in your repos and your AWS org alongside your engineers, not off in a vacuum. The goal is to leave your team able to keep the bill down after we've gone.
Think your AWS bill is bigger than it should be?
It usually is. Tell us a little about your AWS footprint and we'll tell you plainly whether there's enough on the table to be worth an engagement, and if there isn't, we'll say that too.
or email solutions@costops.cloud