07/06/2026 updated

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Software Engineer - Investment Banking & Finance, Project Management & PMO, HR & Payroll.

Johannesburg, South Africa
Worldwide
National Diploma in Information Technology
Johannesburg, South Africa
Worldwide
National Diploma in Information Technology

Profile attachments

Michael Guard - 6 Jul 2026.pdf

About me

30+ years designing, building and managing complex business systems. From front end sales solutions, CRM to Finance, HR, Project Management, Payroll and Human Resources — custom solutions solving complex challenges. UK passport holder. Available globally.

HTMLJavaScriptAgile MethodologyApplication Portfolio ManagementAtlassian JiraCascading Style Sheets (CSS)Change ManagementRAIDExcel MacrosFinancial SoftwareGovernanceGovernance Risk Management and ComplianceInvestment BankingScrum MethodologyProject Portfolio ManagementProject AccountingProject Cost ManagementSoftware Project ManagementSystems IntegrationFinancial Data ManagementExecutive ManagementRegulatory ChangeProject DeliveryFintechBudget Cycles
PMO & Programme Governance
End-to-end programme governance expertise including RAID management, executive reporting, status reporting, planning cycles and full lifecycle programme oversight across investment banking and fintech environments.

Custom Software Development & Bespoke Solutions
Full-cycle custom software development end to end CSS, JS, HTML, AWS integrations and AI enhancements, delivering production-grade systems with complex operational requirements.

Budgeting, Forecasting & Financial Control
Comprehensive financial management including budget lifecycle oversight, headcount monitoring, variance analysis, scenario modelling and forecasting across large-scale technology and change portfolios.

Regulatory & Compliance Programmes
Delivery of mission-critical regulatory programmes including FCA Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and legal entity rationalisation, maintaining continuity during complex periods such as COVID lockdowns.

Agile Transformation & Delivery
Driving agile and Scrum adoption, enforcing PLC/SDLC compliance and supporting agile ways of working across large client-facing and operational technology portfolios.

Stakeholder Reporting & Executive MI
Design and delivery of executive management information, consolidated monthly reporting, portfolio dashboards and tactical dashboard solutions for CIO offices and senior leadership.

RAID Management & Risk Governance
Maintenance of comprehensive RAID logs, risk governance frameworks and formal change management frameworks across regulated financial services environments.

Dashboarding & Data Visualisation
Design and rollout of bespoke portfolio dashboards and data visualisation solutions that improve resource visibility, forecasting accuracy and delivery predictability.

Process Automation & Digital Transformation
Supporting digital transformation initiatives and building scalable custom applications that minimise manual effort and deliver significant efficiency gains for clients.

End-to-End Solution Delivery
Full lifecycle solution delivery from requirements analysis through architecture, development, testing, integration and ongoing support, covering both software and programme governance contexts.

Experience

Professional experience10+ years
Freelancer since2000

Languages

EnglishNative speaker

Project history

CBM (Civil Engineering) - Project Management & Time Tracking

CBM (Civil Engineering https://cbmafrica.co.za/) - South Africa

Industry & Mechanical Engineering

10-50 team member

As CBM scaled, they were unable to accurately track project budgets across multiple concurrent projects, leading to overspending and limited visibility into profit and loss. The solution designed and implemented tracks project and resource budgets against actual time booked in real time, ensuring spend stays aligned to budget. Contractors and allocated resources can no longer over-book or overspend without it being flagged immediately.

We Fin Car Rentals (Vehicle Rentals) - Fleet Financial Tracking

WeFin Car Rentals - South Africa

Automotive & Vehicle Manufacturing

< 10 team member

As We Fin scaled rapidly, manual processes for customer enquiries, vehicle inventory management, payment tracking, contract administration and real-time monitoring became unsustainable, creating inefficiencies in back-office operations and risks to customer service quality. To support continued growth, it was necessary to design, develop and implement a fully custom, unified front-to-back and back-office platform built specifically for We Fin’s rent-to-own business model. Solution serves as the central backbone for the entire customer and operational lifecycle, transforming fragmented workflows into a streamlined and automated system.

Island Safari Lodges (Hotel & Leisure) - HR module

Island Safari Lodges - Maun Botswana

Other

50-250 team member

Island Safari Lodges required a robust, unified HR system to manage its growing workforce amid scaling tourism operations in Botswana's competitive safari sector. Manual or fragmented processes for employee lifecycle management led to inefficiencies in onboarding, scheduling, compliance, performance tracking, and staff self-service particularly challenging in a remote lodge setting with shift-based roles, seasonal hires and field-based teams.

Delivered a fully custom HR-rated platform tailored for hospitality operations, providing an end-to-end system for organisation-wide HR administration. This cloud-based solution centralised and automated the full employee lifecycle, from recruitment to ongoing management, ensuring compliance, transparency and scalability for lodge staff and management.

Elegant Cookware (Retail) - Customer Order Tracking

Elegant Cookware - South Africa

Goods & Retail

< 10 team member

The solution delivered a cloud-based platform featuring real-time order monitoring tracking payments, due dates, and balances across products and promotions. An invoicing engine for generating branded invoices on initial purchase or completion (while handling partial payments compliantly), seamless inventory integration for live stock syncing and dynamic layby eligibility checks to prevent overselling. This tailored system transformed layby management from a vulnerability into a scalable strength, boosting sales, elevating customer satisfaction, enabling team growth through reduced administrative overhead and supporting the business's rapid expansion without compromising service quality or trust in flexible payment options.

Legal Entity Strategy Programme (Investment Banking) - Project Office PMO

Credit Suisse - London

Banking & Financial Services

5000-10.000 team member

Initially, served as a Programme Management Office (PMO) team member overseeing one of five programmes within the Legal Entity Strategy (LES) Portfolio, a strategic initiative focused on optimising the organisation's global legal entity structure for efficiency, compliance, risk management and operational alignment (commonly pursued in multinational or financial services environments to rationalise corporate entities). In this capacity, was responsible for maintaining comprehensive project management artefacts and programme content for the LES Global Strategy programme, which included collating, updating and quality-assuring status reports, detailed programme plans, RAID logs, resource forecasts and programme financials to support accurate and timely inputs into regular senior leadership reporting forums and governance meetings. Later transitioned into the central PMO team, where key gaps were addressed by designing and implementing tactical dashboard solutions and enhanced reporting mechanisms specifically for legal entity rationalisation efforts and 2023 planning cycles, enabling better visibility, data-driven decision-making, progress tracking and strategic alignment across the portfolio.

Forex Change / Regulatory MAR (Investment Banking) - Programme Management PMO

Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank (CACIB)

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

Progressive and resilient PMO support across three evolving roles in a high-stakes investment banking environment. Tenure began as IT PMO on a multi-year FX change programme, providing end-to-end governance, milestone tracking, dependency management and delivery oversight to successfully implement foreign exchange system enhancements and transformations. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, was selected as the sole remaining core PMO for a mission-critical regulatory programme addressing FCA Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) compliance, programme continuity was maintained under remote constraints while strengthening market abuse reporting, monitoring, surveillance and detection controls to ensure full regulatory adherence and preserve market integrity amid unprecedented operational disruption. Subsequently, held a dual PMO role on a major FX client migration project designing and deploying a custom resource and task tracking solution to improve cross-team visibility and coordination while simultaneously supporting the Project Portfolio Management team by preparing and consolidating detailed monthly reporting materials for the CIO Office review board committee, delivering actionable executive insights into portfolio performance, risks and progress. Throughout these roles, consistently demonstrated adaptability, deep expertise in regulatory-driven change, strong stakeholder reporting capabilities and proficiency with agile project tooling.



Regulatory Programme (London Stock Exchange) - Project Office PMO

London Stock Exchange (LSEG)

Banking & Financial Services

5000-10.000 team member

Served as the dedicated Programme Management Office lead on a high-priority regulatory remediation programme for the group's French entity based in Paris. Operating from London, provided end-to-end PMO support to ensure the successful implementation of regulatory recommendations issued by French authorities. The role focused on establishing and maintaining robust programme governance, enforcing strict adherence to the organisation's formal change management framework, coordinating cross-border workstreams between London and Paris teams, tracking progress against remediation milestones, managing risks, issues, and dependencies and delivering clear, timely status reporting to programme sponsors and stakeholders. This work contributed to full compliance closure, reduced regulatory risk exposure and demonstrated effective remote governance in a multinational, regulated financial market infrastructure environment.

Operations Technology (Investment Banking) - Principal Consultant PMO

Morgan Stanley

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

As Principal Consultant PMO supporting Morgan Stanley's Client Technologies area within the Operations Technology Division, provided comprehensive portfolio-level PMO oversight for a complex technology portfolio delivering critical client-facing and operational systems. Accountable for the end-to-end management of project and programme budgets, including planning, forecasting, variance analysis, and re-forecasting to ensure financial discipline and alignment with divisional objectives. Facilitated effective delivery manager planning, established and enforced clear project governance frameworks, drove consistent project tracking and on-time delivery, and maintained full compliance with the firm's Project Life Cycle (PLC) and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) standards through rigorous audit preparation and review processes. A key focus of the role involved designing, implementing and enhancing multiple project management system solutions and interfaces, with particular emphasis on enabling and maturing agile delivery methodologies (including Scrum and related practices) to improve speed, transparency and adaptability across the portfolio while upholding enterprise governance and audit requirements.

Programme Office (Investment Banking) - Senior PMO

HSBC Global Banking And Markets

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

As Senior PMO for the Fixed Income IT area within HSBC's Global Banking and Markets division, established a robust governance framework across a complex portfolio of technology projects supporting fixed income trading, risk management and market operations. Responsible for delivering structured portfolio-level governance, including standardised processes for project initiation, prioritisation, risk management, milestone tracking and dependency oversight to ensure alignment with divisional and group objectives. Produced and presented high-quality group-level reporting, consolidating portfolio status, financials, risks and progress metrics to enable informed decision-making by senior leadership and steering committees. A key achievement was the design, development and successful rollout of a bespoke project headcount tracking solution that improved resource visibility, capacity planning and headcount forecasting accuracy reducing manual effort, minimising over-allocation risks and enhancing overall portfolio delivery efficiency in a high-volume, regulated trading environment.

Fixed Income IT (Investment Banking) - Business Manager

HSBC Global Banking & Markets

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

As Business Manager / PMO within HSBC's Global Banking & Markets division, provided integrated business management and project governance support across Emerging Markets, Sales, Credit, Structured Credit and Production Support functions. Full accountability for the headcount budget lifecycle from strategic planning and preparation through to actuals tracking, re-forecasting and spending control while delivering comprehensive PMO services for the bank's change-the-bank portfolio. Responsibilities encompassed detailed budget analysis and anomaly detection, advisory support on correct budgeting practices aligned with bank-wide processes, rigorous resource and hiring process management and production of actionable MIS including trend analysis, forecasts and scenario modelling for hiring and resource decisions. Concurrently, collated, sanity-checked and analysed project status reports across multiple streams in line with central governance methodology, drove adoption of best-practice project management standards (defining roles, policies, processes, and accountability), monitored delivery progress and leading indicators of risk/failure and ensured full organisational compliance with internal policies, external regulations, audit schedules and quality standards set by the HTS GB&M Quality team contributing to disciplined financial control, effective change delivery and sustained regulatory and operational integrity in a complex global markets environment.



Operations Technology (Investment Banking) - Principal Consultant PMO

Morgan Stanley

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

As Principal Consultant PMO supporting Morgan Stanley's Client Technologies area within the Operations Technology Division. Provided comprehensive portfolio-level PMO oversight for a complex technology portfolio delivering critical client-facing and operational systems. Accountable for the end-to-end management of project and programme budgets, including planning, forecasting, variance analysis and re-forecasting to ensure financial discipline and alignment with divisional objectives. I facilitated effective delivery manager planning, established and enforced clear project governance frameworks, drove consistent project tracking and on-time delivery and maintained full compliance with the firm's Project Life Cycle (PLC) and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) standards through rigorous audit preparation and review processes. A key focus of the role involved designing, implementing and enhancing multiple project management system solutions and interfaces, with particular emphasis on enabling and maturing agile delivery methodologies (including Scrum and related practices) to improve speed, transparency and adaptability across the portfolio while upholding enterprise governance and audit requirements.

Subject Matter Expert (Investment Banking) - Project Management

Barclays Capital

Banking & Financial Services

1000-5000 team member

As Subject Matter Expert on project management best practices, methodologies and toolsets at Barclays Capital IT. Served as the central authority for standardising and maturing the organisation's project management framework across the entire IT division. Led the training and onboarding of project managers of the project framework, ensuring consistent adoption of governance standards and delivery disciplines. Maintained the Enterprise Project Server (EPS/EPM) toolset, supporting day-to-day project execution, centralised portfolio reporting, strategic best-practice discussions and incremental maturity enhancements. Key deliverables included the design and implementation of an automated reporting system for portfolio overviews, highlight reports and ad-hoc analyses delivered directly to the CIO and senior executive leadership. End-to-end facilitation of Steering Committees from initial requirements gathering and prioritisation through to specification sign-off, developer communication, UAT management and successful go-live rollouts and integration of cost transparency processes into project systems, establishing new data flows and accurate cost allocation to IT Service Groups while managing user demand, support, and adoption within the team collectively elevating project governance, visibility, compliance, and delivery effectiveness across a large-scale investment banking IT environment.

Business Analyst Reconciliation

SAP Project Implementation

Internet & IT

500-1000 team member

Responsible for designing and implementing the supply chain reconciliation process within the
group-wide programme to migrate supply chain data to the SAP R3 platform. During this time tools
were written to import and analyse all the data for the reconciliation of the different data objects
from the legacy systems into SAP.

HRIT Analyst

Shell

Energy, Water & Environment

>10.000 team member

As HRIT Analyst at Shell / Enterprise Oil, as fully accountable for the support, maintenance, and successful delivery of all IT systems underpinning the Human Resources function across the organisation. This encompassed end-to-end responsibility for HR application stability, user support, incident resolution, system enhancements, data integrity and the rollout of new or upgraded HR technologies to ensure seamless HR operations, accurate employee data management, payroll processing reliability and compliance with internal policies and employment regulations. Collaborated closely with HR business partners, payroll teams and external vendors to prioritise requirements, troubleshoot issues, implement fixes and improvements, conduct user training and manage change processes contributing to high system availability, reduced downtime and enhanced HR service delivery in a dynamic energy sector environment.

HRIT Analyst

IBM

Internet & IT

>10.000 team member

HRIT Analyst at IBM, played a key role in a major regional HR systems transformation project across EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), supporting the alignment and harmonisation of the central Lotus Pan-Europe HR system with the diverse, country-specific IBM HR systems in place across multiple EMEA nations. Contributed to the successful migration of payroll processing from the existing Lotus-based payroll platform to IBM’s in-house developed payroll solution tailored for each country. This involved detailed requirements gathering, gap analysis between legacy Lotus systems and target IBM payroll environments, data mapping and cleansing, configuration support, testing coordination, change management activities, and user training to ensure accurate employee data synchronisation, compliant payroll calculations (tax, social security, benefits) and seamless transition with minimal business disruption. The project delivered standardised HR and payroll operations across the region while respecting local regulatory and statutory requirements, enhancing data consistency, reporting accuracy and operational efficiency for IBM’s EMEA workforce.

Corporate Systems Developer Team Lead

Halliburton

Industry & Mechanical Engineering

>10.000 team member

Led the design, development, maintenance and enhancement of a critical set of in-house business systems supporting core operational and financial functions. This included personnel/HR management, payroll processing, general accounting, project profitability analysis, time recording and project management applications tailored to the division’s engineering and consulting needs in the energy sector. Managed a small development team, oversaw the full software development lifecycle from requirements gathering and technical architecture through coding, testing, deployment, and ongoing support while ensuring system reliability, data accuracy, regulatory compliance (e.g. payroll tax and labour laws) and alignment with business processes. Delivered stable, high-performance applications that enabled accurate employee data management, timely payroll runs, precise financial reporting, project cost tracking, profitability insights and efficient time/attendance recording, directly supporting operational efficiency, financial control and project delivery success for the division.

HR Systems Analyst

BNP Paribas

Banking & Financial Services

>10.000 team member

HR Systems Analyst at BNP Paribas in London, responsible for the ongoing support, maintenance and functional enhancement of all HR IT systems serving the London office, ensuring reliable performance, data accuracy, user support and alignment with evolving HR processes. This encompassed troubleshooting incidents, implementing system fixes and upgrades, managing data integrity, coordinating with vendors and delivering user training to support core HR functions such as employee records, recruitment, performance management and payroll interfaces. In parallel, developed and supported the global compensation review process specifically for the Fixed Income and Equities divisions producing accurate, timely and compliant compensation data extracts, analytics, benchmarking reports, bonus calculations and executive-level summaries that informed year-end pay decisions, equity awards, and regulatory disclosures across the global business, contributing to fair, transparent and competitive compensation in a high-stakes investment banking environment.

HR Application Consultant

Ceridian Centre-file

Internet & IT

500-1000 team member

HR Application Consultant at Ceridian, specialised in delivering high-value HR systems services with a primary focus on complex data migrations, pre-sales consulting and the design and implementation of bespoke, customised HR solutions for clients. Supported end-to-end data migration projects extracting, cleansing, mapping, transforming and loading HR, payroll and employee data from legacy or disparate systems into Ceridian’s HR platforms ensuring accuracy, completeness, compliance and minimal business disruption during transitions. In pre-sales activities, acted as a trusted technical advisor, conducting needs assessments, demonstrating product capabilities, scoping requirements, preparing proof-of-concept demonstrations and contributing to proposal development to help secure new business. For bespoke solutions, collaborated closely with clients to understand unique business processes, then designed, configured and delivered tailored HR system enhancements, custom reports, interfaces, workflows and integrations that precisely aligned with their operational, compliance and strategic requirements enabling clients to achieve greater efficiency, better data integrity and enhanced HR service delivery in diverse industries.

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