Engineering Meets FinOps ft. Matan Ben-Ishay, Credit Karma | Ep #70

What if your biggest cloud inefficiency isn’t how much you’re using, but how long your workloads are running?

In this special episode of FinOps in Action, PointFive’s Co-Founder and CPO, Gal Ben David sits down with Matan Ben-Ishay, leading FP&A, Engineering, and Cloud Infrastructure at Credit Karma, to unpack a real world cloud efficiency discovery that led to tens of millions of dollars in savings without reducing usage or cutting performance.

Matan shares how a simple assumption about “cheaper” CPUs quietly inflated costs, why billing data alone didn’t reveal the problem, and how true FinOps impact only happens when finance and engineering work side by side.

We also covered how FinOps wins happen at the intersection of finance, engineering, and product and how understanding accounting concepts is a career advantage in FinOps.

Here’s what we talked about:

• How a hidden GCP dataflow inefficiency cost tens of millions until Matan sat with engineers and discovered faster CPUs actually cost less per hour
• Why rigid governance policies backfire and how flexible guidelines that encourage engineers to evaluate their actual workload needs prevent waste
• Why FinOps professionals need to understand accounting concepts (depreciation, amortization, commitments)
• The emerging need for cloud efficiency engineers embedded in teams who can bridge the gap between FinOps strategy and hands on optimization work
• How running parallel tests of old vs. new approaches proves value to skeptical engineers and turns short-term testing costs into long-term savings
• The structural friction between engineering OKRs (focused on launches and reliability) and cost efficiency, and why engineers should treat cloud spend like any other company resource

Chapters:

00:00 FinOps Is Everyone’s Job

00:16 Special Episode Setup

01:27 Meet Matan Ben-Ishay

02:14 The Incentives Mistake

05:12 Speed vs Cost in AI

07:30 How to Motivate Engineers

10:19 Scaling Best Practices Org-Wide

13:27 Where FinOps Should Sit

18:02 Guardrails and Shared Ownership

20:55 Fleet Guardrails Matter

21:38 Hidden Waste Over Time

22:47 Can We Prevent Waste

25:56 Tactical vs Strategic Waste

27:00 FinOps on GCP Reality

29:14 Commitment Forecasting Playbook

32:30 FinOps Parenting Hacks

35:31 Personal Picks and Growth

37:53 Closing and Where to Connect

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Quote of the Show:

• “We need those cloud efficiency engineers in order to understand.” - Matan Ben-Ishay

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matan-ben-ishay/
• Website: https://www.creditkarma.com/

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