Tara Lynch

About Tara Lynch

Certified FinOps Practitioner specializing in cloud financial management and cost optimization across AWS and Azure. I have in-depth experience managing multi-million-dollar cloud and technology budgets, driving AWS cost optimization, and building financial transparency for engineering and product organizations.At TeleTracking, I oversee a $10M cloud hosting and R&D budget, ensuring alignment with Finance, Engineering, and senior leadership. I\'ve led initiatives to optimize Savings Plans and Reserved Instance coverage, recover overspend, and build forecasting models.Beyond AWS and cloud financial management, I partner with Engineering and Product Management to budget for technology roadmaps, align spend with capacity and performance requirements, and implement chargeback and allocation models. These efforts have increased cost transparency, reduced variance, and improved accountability across teams.Earlier in my career, I scaled Agile delivery, implemented software performance and delivery metrics, and led business analysis for TeleTracking\'s enterprise analytics platform. This blend of technical, financial, and program leadership allows me to bridge teams, align priorities, and deliver measurable results.

Experience

1. Technical Project Manager

   TeleTracking

   Mar 2020 — Present · Pittsburgh, PA, US

   Manage $10M+ cloud hosting budget, aligning spend with Finance, Procurement, Engineering, and Product priorities.Drive AWS cost optimization, improving Savings Plan and RI coverage, rightsizing workloads, and aligning contracts with usage forecasts.Build forecasting models; present insights to senior leadership and engineering teams.Partner with Engineering and Product Management to budget for technology roadmaps, implement chargeback/allocation models, and increase tagging compliance from X% → Y%.Develop executive dashboards (Excel/Tableau/Quicksight/Cost Explorer) for cost transparency, enabling variance tracking and optimization reporting.Collaborate with Procurement on SaaS and cloud vendor negotiations (AWS, Snowflake, Salesforce, Okta, MongoDB), ensuring budget adherence.Own monthly vendor invoice reconciliation; identified discrepancies and recovered nearly $200K in overcharges.

Education

• Carnegie Mellon University

  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Professional, Technical, Business, and Scientific Writing