Head of Operating Model Optimisation, 6 months, London/Hybrid, £700 - £850/day (Inside IR35)

Essential skills/ experience:: Black belt, 6 sigma, experience in process redesigning.

The role will establish and lead the client's Operating Model Optimisation Centre of Excellence (CoE), focused on resolving complex, cross-functional inefficiencies in how the client operates at scale.

You will operate as an end-to-end optimisation and transformation capability, combining structured diagnostic, solution design, and delivery leadership.

Your accountabilities will include:

1. Enterprise Diagnostic & Opportunity Identification

* Identifying and prioritising the client's most material, cross-functional journeys, particularly those that span multiple business areas or involve systemic constraints.

* Mapping and analysing end-to-end processes and customer journeys to understand how workflows across the client, including volumes, demand, handoffs, delays, and capacity constraints.

* Identifying systemic bottlenecks, duplication, fragmentation, and misalignment in how work is organised and delivered across the client.

* Leading cross-functional workshops to map current-state journeys and redesign future-state journeys, with a focus on simplifying, removing manual steps, and enabling fully or highly agentic ways of working.

* Designing future-state journeys with an assumption of AI and automation as the default, identifying where fully or partially agentic solutions can remove manual effort, reduce handoffs, and improve flow.

2. Operating Model Design & Transformation

* Designing operating model interventions to resolve systemic performance issues, including redesign of workflows, ownership models, organisational structures, governance, and demand/capacity alignment.

* Defining clear, evidence-based transformation roadmaps, outlining structural, process, and organisational changes required to improve performance.

* Mobilising and leading transformation initiatives that deliver material, cross-functional improvements in efficiency, scalability, and customer outcomes.

* Ensuring changes are implemented effectively and embedded sustainably across business areas.

* Where appropriate, shaping and handing off clearly defined opportunities to the Enterprise AI Transformation team for prioritisation and delivery.

3. Governance, Standards & Executive Advisory

* Establishing and leading the Operating Model Optimisation Centre of Excellence, setting standards for enterprise-level diagnostic and transformation approaches.

* Ensuring all initiatives are supported by robust analysis, clear business cases, and measurable outcomes.

* Providing senior stakeholders with clear visibility of systemic performance issues, recommended interventions, and delivery progress.

* Acting as a senior advisor on operating model effectiveness, organisational design, and enterprise-level optimisation.

You will bring:

* Deep expertise in operating model design, organisational effectiveness, and system-level optimisation within complex, regulated environments.

* Proven ability to diagnose and resolve cross-functional performance issues that span multiple business areas and cannot be addressed through incremental process improvement.

* Strong systems thinking capability, with the ability to understand and redesign end-to-end value chains, including flow, dependencies, and constraints.

* Experience leading large-scale, cross-functional transformation initiatives involving structural, organisational, or workflow redesign.

* Ability to analyse demand, capacity, and throughput to identify and resolve performance constraints at an enterprise level.

* Strong facilitation and problem-solving skills, with experience leading senior stakeholders through complex, ambiguous challenges.

* Experience defining high-value technology or AI opportunities grounded in end-to-end process and operating model insight.

* Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to quantify enterprise-level opportunities and assess impact across cost, risk, and customer outcomes.

* Ability to operate independently at enterprise level, influencing without direct ownership of all delivery resources.

* Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills at senior leadership level.