Available for select engagements

Operating Model Design, Transformation Delivery & AI Enablement

Change and transformation leader with 20+ years designing target operating models and delivering complex programmes across banking, travel and healthcare — now embedding AI into how large organisations work.

Available for

AdvisoryInterim LeadershipOperating Model DesignAI Enablement

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Christian Macedo

Transformation & Target Operating Model Leader

About

Twenty years turning strategy into operating models that actually run

I'm a change and transformation leader. For over 20 years I've designed and implemented target operating models and led complex technical programmes across finance, travel and healthcare — from FTSE 100 banks (HSBC, Lloyds, Standard Bank) to a PE-backed cruise operator (Hurtigruten) and a VC-backed startup (Kultralab), plus public sector at NHS Test & Trace and Ofgem.

Today I'm a Product Owner within HSBC's Global Payments Solutions, in the Value Stream Optimisation team — working with Exco and global leadership to define the ways of working for 500 teams across a £450m portfolio. Change and adoption is the hard part, and it's the part I lead.

Alongside that I design and build AI-native products end to end — using two methods I created: a capability meta-model for architecting modular systems, and an AI delivery harness that takes work from idea to production. I review where AI fits an operating model, then prove it by building.

“Transformation succeeds when strategy, operating model and technology move together — and increasingly, when the person setting direction can also build the thing.”

Focus: Operating model design · Transformation delivery · AI enablement
Current: HSBC — Product Owner, GPS Value Stream Optimisation
Experience: 20+ years across banking, travel & healthcare
Range: FTSE 100 · PE-backed · VC-backed · public sector
Based: London, United Kingdom
Education: BSc (Hons) Computing & Information Systems

20+

Years leading transformation

500

Teams within operating models I've shaped

£450m

Portfolio scope at HSBC GPS

Countries in global delivery (GPWS)

Delivered across

HSBCNHSHurtigrutenOfgemBritish AirwaysLloydsStandard Bank

Services

Three ways I work

From setting direction on a transformation to building the system that delivers it.

Target Operating Model Design

Designing and implementing operating models that hold up in the real world — roles, decision rights, ways of working — then leading the change and adoption that makes them stick. Delivered at HSBC GPS, GCS and beyond.

Transformation & Delivery Leadership

Programme and delivery leadership for complex, regulated change. Agile at scale (Scrum, SAFe), cross-functional and offshore teams, and the stakeholder work that keeps large transformations moving.

AI Enablement & Systems

Assessing where AI genuinely fits an operating model, then proving it — from reviews of AI implementation to full-stack, AI-native systems I design and build end to end.

Frameworks

Two methods I built

The bridge between setting direction and shipping it: one framework for designing modular architectures, one AI harness for delivering them.

Capability Meta-Model

Modular architecture

A sector-neutral model for decomposing an organisation into capabilities

A JSON-Schema meta-model that treats each capability as a mandate-backed business function — the primary unit of architectural decomposition. Capabilities own their data and talk only through events; channels reach them via REST. Share contracts, never implementations.

Six-part capability bundle: mandate, competitive landscape, regulatory horizon, build-vs-buy, sub-capabilities, design decisions
A four-criterion promotion test decides what earns standalone-capability status
18 schemas; sector packs (banking, energy, health) build on the same substrate

The Intelligent Pipeline

AI development harness

An agent-team pipeline that carries a ticket from idea to production

A Jira + Claude Code harness where specialist agent teams move each ticket through a progressive-confidence pipeline, gated by evidence and two human checkpoints. Design and build run as two pipelines joined by an orchestrating Programme Lead.

Six stages from development to release, run by seven specialist agent teams
~61 quality gates (39 scripted, 22 reasoning) plus token-saving automation scripts
Three always-on Docker environments and a four-branch git model

Selected work

Products built with them

AI-native products I designed and shipped end to end — using the frameworks above.

Hindsite

AI · Editorial Intelligence

An autonomous, AI-native news publication

A premium daily publication generated by an autonomous AI pipeline — from source ingestion and claim extraction to editing, trust & safety gating and multi-language publishing. Capability-driven architecture, full-stack across API and web.

20+

Product capabilities shipped

Languages, audio + archive

Cloud spend by design

Visit hindsite.space

HelixChain

AI × CRISPR × Blockchain

A regulatory-grounded clinical-trial platform

An integrated platform pairing AI, CRISPR workflows and blockchain provenance across ten regulatory-grounded capabilities. Capability-driven architecture designed for auditability in a high-compliance domain.

Regulatory capabilities

Technologies integrated

E2E

Design to architecture

Visit helixchain.tech

Transformation outcomes

01HSBC GPSOperating model & ways of working defined for 500 teams (£450m)
02HSBC RBWMGlobal Adobe Experience Manager migration across 27 countries (GPWS)
03NHS Test & TraceDesign-to-development handover cut from 4 hours to 1 per sprint
04HurtigrutenPE-backed cruise line — technical meeting load cut from 40 to 3.5 hrs/week
05KultralabVC-backed CoachTech platform — £1m delivery budget, 15% vendor cost saving

Let's talk about your operating model, programme or AI enablement

Advisory, interim leadership, operating-model design, or building an AI-native system from scratch — start here.

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