How Grammarly is Revolutionizing FinOps
Learn from Grammarly on how they do FinOps
Steph Gooch
Amazon Employee
Published Mar 17, 2025
In this episode of the Keys to AWS Optimization, we sit down with Jeff Duresky, a Senior FinOps Commercial Architect from the OPTICS team at AWS, and Josh Collier, the FinOps Lead at Grammarly. They dive into how Grammarly has approached their FinOps journey, sharing insights and strategies that can inspire others on their own cost optimization efforts.
1. Building a Collaborative FinOps Culture: Grammarly has fostered a culture where the FinOps team works closely with engineering, approaching them with curiosity rather than criticism. This has enabled seamless integration and proactive optimization.
2. Automating Reporting and Visibility: Grammarly prioritized automating their cost reporting to provide real-time data and insights to stakeholders, empowering engineers to make informed decisions.
3. Leveraging Infrastructure as Code for Tagging: Grammarly's use of Terraform to manage their infrastructure has resulted in a robust tagging structure, simplifying cost attribution and optimization efforts.
4. Balancing Short-term and Long-term Goals: Grammarly adopts a balanced approach, tackling low-hanging fruit for quick wins while also investing in long-term initiatives like their migration to Amazon EKS.
5. Navigating the Evolving AI Landscape: As an early adopter of generative AI, Grammarly has faced unique FinOps challenges, including managing capacity, understanding billing models, and optimizing usage.
2. Automating Reporting and Visibility: Grammarly prioritized automating their cost reporting to provide real-time data and insights to stakeholders, empowering engineers to make informed decisions.
3. Leveraging Infrastructure as Code for Tagging: Grammarly's use of Terraform to manage their infrastructure has resulted in a robust tagging structure, simplifying cost attribution and optimization efforts.
4. Balancing Short-term and Long-term Goals: Grammarly adopts a balanced approach, tackling low-hanging fruit for quick wins while also investing in long-term initiatives like their migration to Amazon EKS.
5. Navigating the Evolving AI Landscape: As an early adopter of generative AI, Grammarly has faced unique FinOps challenges, including managing capacity, understanding billing models, and optimizing usage.
Notable Quotes:
"I was really unabashful about asking questions, but I also was very tactful and thoughtful in how I did it. I would come from a place of curiosity instead of a place of why is this happening." - Josh Collier, FinOps Lead at Grammarly
"I was really unabashful about asking questions, but I also was very tactful and thoughtful in how I did it. I would come from a place of curiosity instead of a place of why is this happening." - Josh Collier, FinOps Lead at Grammarly
Call to Action:
If you're interested in learning more about FinOps best practices and the evolving role of AI in cloud cost optimization, be sure to check out the on-demand recording of this episode on the AWS YouTube channel. Additionally, stay tuned for next week's episode, where we'll dive into how AWS itself approaches FinOps. You can submit your questions for the next session by emailing cost-optimization@amazon.com.
If you're interested in learning more about FinOps best practices and the evolving role of AI in cloud cost optimization, be sure to check out the on-demand recording of this episode on the AWS YouTube channel. Additionally, stay tuned for next week's episode, where we'll dive into how AWS itself approaches FinOps. You can submit your questions for the next session by emailing cost-optimization@amazon.com.
Youtube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=A0Pl0xFgAwg
Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.