CASE 29 · MARLOW · 2024
Sandbox accounts that clean themselves.
An engineering org had 140 sandbox AWS accounts and a $42k/month sandbox bill. Most of the spend was in twelve accounts whose owners had left the company. We built a lifecycle pipeline that watches for ownership, sets budgets, and decommissions silently.
Internal engineering org
LANDING ZONE
2024
RESULTS
What changed, by the numbers.
SANDBOX BILL
−68%
ACCOUNTS DECOMMISSIONED
52
ORPHANED ACCOUNTS
0
BUDGET ENFORCEMENT
ACTIVE
HOW IT WENT
The first ownership audit was the smelly part. Twelve accounts had departed-employee email addresses on file. Several had budgets set to $100,000 in error. One was running a forgotten GPU training job that had been billing $80/day for fourteen months.
The pipeline now checks ownership on a quarterly cycle: email the owner via SES, require a human-in-the-loop "I still need this" response, escalate to their manager, then decommission via AWS Nuke after a 30-day grace period. Cost anomalies trigger immediate review.
The bill dropped from $42k to $13k in two months. Ongoing decay stays under control because the pipeline runs continuously. The engineering org has the same 140 accounts now, but only the ones people actually use.
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