FinOps is becoming an essential skill for platform engineers in 2026. This episode provides a complete guide to the skills, certifications, and tools you need to add cloud cost management to your platform engineering toolkit. 📰 News Segment:• GPG.fail documents 14 critical GnuPG vulnerabilities - check your signing tools• MongoBleed CVE-2025-14847: Critical MongoDB exploit - patch immediately• The Dangers of SSL Certificates: Catastrophic failure modes in automation• Google Multi-Cluster Orchestrator: Cross-region K8s management (KubeCon 2025)• GPG cleartext signature parsing vulnerabilities found 💡 Key Takeaways:• Platform teams own 70%+ of cloud spending decisions• FinOps + Platform Engineering = $175K+ compound skill premium• Senior FinOps Engineers average $150K, top earners reach $250K• 76% of organizations are increasing FinOps investment• New certifications: FinOps for AI (March 2026), FinOps for Containers 🎯 Skills Covered:• Tier 1: Cloud billing data, K8s cost allocation, unit economics• Tier 2: FOCUS specification v1.3, OpenCost/Kubecost, showback/chargeback• Tier 3: Automated rightsizing, committed use discounts, AI workload optimization 🔗 Resources:• FinOps Foundation: finops.org• OpenCost (CNCF): opencost.io• FOCUS Specification: focus.finops.org• Episode page: platformengineering.org/podcasts/00073-finops-2026-platform-engineers-guide #FinOps #PlatformEngineering #CloudCost #Kubernetes #DevOps #CNCF #OpenCost