How to Drive FinOps Awareness Without Slowing Teams Down ft. Tom Cross, Aer Lingus | Ep 39

What does good FinOps look like inside a large engineering organization?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sat down with Tom Cross, FinOps Lead at Aer Lingus and a member of the FinOps Foundation Technical Advisory Council, to talk about building FinOps culture, engaging engineers, and shaping the global FinOps framework.

Tom shared how he transitioned from software engineering to FinOps leadership, why optimization became his passion, and how he balances governance with empathy to drive adoption without slowing delivery.

We also discussed what’s next for the FinOps Framework, how usage-based anomaly detection is changing cost management, and why the future of FinOps is as much about relationships as it is about data.

Here’s what we talked about:

• How Tom went from engineering to FinOps leadership

• Why FinOps is really about helping engineers make better decisions

• Lightweight enforcement and governance that actually work

• Usage-based anomaly detection and root cause tracking

• What’s new at the FinOps Foundation Technical Advisory Council

• How the FinOps Framework continues to evolve for practitioners

If you’re leading a FinOps practice or trying to make engineering collaboration part of your culture, this episode is full of practical, hard-won insights.

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Quote of the Show:

• "Engineers want to do the right thing. We don't want to do a bad job. If you give them the right incentives and they're prioritized to optimize things, then things will shine." - Tom Cross

Connect with Tom:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomcross/
• Website: http://www.aerlingus.com 

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