A finance partner forged in Amazon's hypergrowth — now bringing that discipline to growing companies as their fractional CFO.
John Roberts is a trusted finance partner with 16 years as a finance professional — including 15 years solving large-scale and highly ambiguous problems at AWS and Amazon.com.
He has a proven ability to scale alongside Amazon during extreme growth — a period in which the company's market capitalization increased 4,241%, from $56.9B to $2.47T. That environment demands rigor, speed, and judgment under uncertainty, and it's the foundation John brings to every engagement.
Today, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, John is President of Power Capital Consulting, partnering with hyperscale data-center developers and cloud-infrastructure investors to sharpen their financial and accounting processes — and bringing that same CFO-level discipline to growing companies.
From Amazon to Fractional CFO.
Partners with hyperscale data-center developers (PowerHouse) and cloud-infrastructure investors — designing compliance and audit functions for development costs, leading real-estate development software implementation (Northspyre), and driving scalable, profitable process improvement.
Led cross-functional automation projects with CFO sponsorship — full data-center asset-lifecycle automation, controllership for a new power-generator manufacturing process, and accelerating construction timelines for AI-driven mega-campus demand.
Liaison between Finance, Accounting, and technical teams on large-scale projects — for scale, AWS held $108.5B in assets and $24.8B in net PP&E additions in 2023. Exceeded the CFO's goal for fixed-asset PO-coding accuracy with a solution still in use years later.
Led the finance team for data-center capex — growing from $1.5B to $3B/yr on AWS's largest commercial cluster, then scaling to lead global DC capex of $12B/yr with a team of five.
Full P&L ownership for multiple services generating over $1B in revenue — pricing strategy, multi-year forecasting, and cost-allocation methodology.
Led a team of five supporting multi-billion-dollar server procurement and supply chain (incl. Annapurna) — modeling a multi-billion-dollar server-manufacturing initiative and leading multi-generational CPU pricing negotiations with Intel and others.
Built the automated Weekly Business Review consolidating inputs from thirty-five teams for senior executives — including then-AWS-CEO Andy Jassy.
Led the establishment of a global Business Intelligence team, delivering online analytic dashboards and ad hoc reporting across nine countries — driving data-driven insights, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
Led the development and implementation of scalable best practices for processing vendor disputes, managing the transition of vendor dispute work to an offshore team in India — overseeing training, escalations, and work quality for US-based contractors and the Hyderabad team.
Building the reporting infrastructure and processes that let a company trust its numbers and move fast.
Deep experience in data-center, server infrastructure, and supply chain finance — capital-intensive, operationally complex.
Owning the economics of products end to end — from forecasting and pricing to margin and growth.
In heavy-capital builds, finance isn't bookkeeping — it's protection. We architect the controls, draw schedules, and covenant reporting that keep a project funded and compliant, then translate the numbers into the decisions that keep it moving.
