Bryan Polson is a FinOps and cloud finance specialist at FinUp Partners, where he partners with engineering, product, and data teams to optimize cloud spend and improve unit economics. His work centers on analyzing complex cloud environments, identifying inefficiencies, and translating financial insights into actionable technical recommendations. 

Bryan has led initiatives that reduced infrastructure costs in sectors such as e-commerce by eliminating unused capacity and optimizing instance usage, directly lowering cost-to-serve metrics. He is particularly focused on helping organizations navigate the financial complexity of AI adoption, addressing what he describes as “second-order” challenges emerging from rapid technological change.

Earlier in his career, Bryan served in the Peace Corps, an experience that shaped his stakeholder-first approach to financial operations. Working across diverse communities with novel challenges strengthened his ability to listen, identify pain points, and build alignment - skills he now applies when guiding cross-functional teams through timing and prioritization hurdles. In addition to e-commerce, he has supported FinOps efforts in live sports streaming, bringing financial discipline to high-scale, high-variability cloud environments. 

An extrovert by nature, Bryan is motivated by helping clients achieve sustainable, profitable growth through collaborative problem-solving.

Recent Work

• Cloud cost optimization (E-commerce) — Reduced infrastructure cost-to-serve by eliminating unused capacity and optimizing instance selection.
• FinOps advisory (Live sports streaming) — Supported cloud financial management in high-traffic, real-time streaming environments.
• AI-era FinOps strategy — Advises organizations on managing cloud economics amid accelerating AI adoption.