In one embodiment, a system includes: a plurality of cloud nodes implemented on computing devices, the plurality of cloud nodes configured to execute computing jobs in a cloud computing environment according to a schedule, a schedule optimizer configured to: use a machine learning model to determine functional intent for job requests according to at least job execution metadata, and generate a schedule recommendation for jobs associated with the job requests, where the schedule recommendation is generated based at least in part on the functional intent; and a job executor configured to provide the schedule recommendation as the schedule to the plurality of cloud nodes, where the schedule optimizer and the job executor are instantiated in memory and executed by processing circuitry on at least one computing device.