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Mark Richman

@markrichman

Interim and fractional CTO at Mark Richman, LLC, helping PE-backed companies defend cloud costs with FinOps and AI economics.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I'm available for interim and fractional engagements, including interim coverage while a permanent search runs. I take on interim roles 3–5 days per week for 3–9 months, or fractional roles 2–3 days per week for 6–12 months.

At Mark Richman, LLC, I provide interim and fractional CTO leadership for PE-backed technology companies. I establish post-acquisition cost baselines, build optimization programs, and put FinOps and board-level reporting in place.

I wrote Cloud Economics for Private Equity, drawing on interviews with 73 PE professionals at 41 firms and analysis of 127 portfolio companies. I also support sponsors with technical due diligence and post-close cloud economics.

At Snowflake, I advised enterprise leaders on AI economics across Cortex AI and agentic workflows, including model selection, inference cost, and GPU utilization. I grounded build-versus-buy and platform consolidation decisions in total cost of ownership and consumption economics.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), I influenced more than $200M in annual cloud consumption and directed a VMware-to-AWS migration program spanning 70+ migrations and $50M+ in ARR. Earlier, I drove $3M in realized cloud spend optimization at Linux Academy / A Cloud Guru and architected the Azure platform at Campus Management Corporation.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Principal — Cloud Economics Advisory

Current

Mark Richman, LLC

Oct 2026 - Present (1 month)

Provides interim and fractional CTO leadership for PE-backed technology companies, including post-acquisition cost baseline, optimization program, FinOps function, and board-level reporting. Also conducts technical due diligence and post-close cloud economics for private equity sponsors.

Cloud Economics FinOps Technical Due Diligence Cost Optimization Board Reporting Private Equity

AI Solutions Specialist (Field CTO)

Snowflake

Apr 2026 - Oct 2026 (6 months)

Advised enterprise CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Data Officers on platform capability and business cases. Focused on enterprise AI economics, including model selection, inference cost, and GPU utilization, and guided build-versus-buy decisions against competitors.

AI Economics Research Cortex AI Agentic Workflows Model Selection GPU Resource Allocation TCO analysis Build Or Buy

Principal Solutions Architect (Field CTO)

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sep 2020 - Apr 2026 (5 years 7 months)

Influenced $200M+ in annual cloud consumption across Fortune 100 healthcare and financial services accounts. Led financial stewardship, a VMware-to-AWS migration program, and established architecture standards through the AWS Containers Excellence Program.

AWS Cloud Architecture Financial Stewardship Cost Optimization VMware Migration Containers Kubernetes HIPAA HITRUST PCI DSS Executive Presentation

AWS Training Architect

Linux Academy / A Cloud Guru

Jan 2018 - Dec 2020 (2 years 11 months)

Drove $3M in realized cloud spend optimization through right-sizing, commitment management, and architectural redesign. Led strategy and execution for a platform scaling to 2M+ learners and 150,000+ provisioned cloud environments per month.

Cloud Cost Optimization rightsizing Commitment Management Architectural Redesign Platform Scaling Automated Provisioning Security Controls Fraud Detection

Enterprise Architect

Campus Management Corporation

Jan 2014 - Dec 2018 (4 years 11 months)

Acted as internal CTO, architecting the Azure platform and establishing the engineering operating model. Led post-acquisition integration of Talisma CRM and a multi-year containerization program moving 400+ on-premises environments to Azure Kubernetes Service.

Azure Kubernetes AKS Architecture Engineering Operating Model Post Acquisition Integration Containerization technology strategy

Web Development Manager

Vitacost.com

Jan 2011 - Dec 2013 (2 years 11 months)

Provided engineering leadership for a high-traffic e-commerce platform and owned vendor and integration strategy across payment, search, CRM, and fulfillment.

Ecommerce Engineering Leadership Vendor Management Integration Strategies