Johan Chavaillaz
Team Leader & Software Engineer
Introduction
Engineering leader with a strong hands-on technical foundation, bridging the corporate and technical worlds across large scale, business critical projects in the financial services and payment industry. Experienced in leading organizations while staying technically engaged, translating business objectives into technical direction and technical realities into business language. Passionate about software quality, team growth, and building environments where engineers do their best work.
Expertise
01
Servant Leadership
People-first leader who builds environments of trust, coaches individuals and actively listens. Strong ability to quickly grasp the big picture and guide teams toward clear, achievable objectives.
02
Software Quality
Drives quality as a strategic lever by pushing for full CI/CD pipelines, enforcing architectural governance and championing all dimensions of software excellence: maintainability, scalability, reliability, security and observability.
03
Software Development
Deep expertise in Java and Jakarta EE, forged through business critical projects. Quick to pick up new languages, frameworks and paradigms with a constant eye on technical debt management and building healthy engineering practices.
04
Software Architecture
Shapes architectural vision and direction alongside architecture boards, empowering a dedicated lead while staying engaged as a senior advisor on critical decisions and open questions. Drives application alignment across teams through shared standards and reusable components.
05
Software Migration
Leads complex migration programs from legacy to state-of-the-art technology, defining streams and aligning stakeholders across business and DevOps. Proven on one of the department's most ambitious initiatives: a 3M+ CHF rewrite of the core payment acceptance protocol.
06
Innovation
Constantly explores new ideas and drives them to implementation, stepping beyond the comfort zone. Active participant in Hackathons and tech events in the Zürich and Bern area.
Experience
2025 – Present
Worldline
Head of Frontoffice Acquiring
Biel/Bienne & Zürich, Switzerland
Director of the Frontoffice Acquiring department (80 people), owning the full lifecycle of critical payment applications (Acceptance, Acquiring, Mobile Payment, ATM) across a 24/7 operational environment. Leading high performance teams through scaling challenges, architectural decisions and crisis situations, while ensuring compliance with industry standards. Built a department culture grounded in collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
2018 – 2025
SIX Payment Services / Worldline
Head of Frontoffice Acquiring Retail Application Engineering
Biel/Bienne & Zürich, Switzerland
Grew from leading one team of 8 (2018), to two teams of 16 (2019), to three teams of 22 engineers (2020), building Switzerland's core merchant payment infrastructure (ep2) for merchants. Maintained active technical involvement, driving architectural decisions and technology choices alongside engineering leadership.
Our responsibilities, as a team, are to- Deliver high quality, zero-downtime services
- Ensure operational excellence across all products
- Analyze, design and implement business solutions
- Migrate applications to our high availability platform
- Organized and facilitated management retreats
- Won the third prize as well as the challenge prize for Sustainable Investment of the SIX Hackathon 2018 with the project TAXESy
2015 – 2018
SIX Group
Application Engineer
Biel/Bienne & Zürich, Switzerland
Payment Services Business
- Backend development of acquiring applications handling more than 5 million transactions every day
- Mobile payments services backend development for Paymit/Twint
- SWXess Trading Platform development of a testing framework for the Market Data and Trading Interface
- Selected for the SIX Junior Development Program (SIX talent development program)
- Participated in the SIX Mentoring Program as mentee
- Attended external and internal courses, both for hard skills and soft skills
- Won the 2016 edition of the SIX Hackathon with the project Paymotion (see below)
- Organized Student Days to scout for young talents
- Introduced Big Room Planning to the department
- President of the Sport and Leisure Club of SIX Biel
- Passion for designing internal documents, presentations, flyers and logos
- Java, JavaEE, Spring, JBoss, Oracle, Docker, Ansible, Linux, Elastic Stack, HP NonStop, Cobol
2012 – 2016
ICT-Berufsbildung Schweiz
Member of the organizing committee of the Computer Science Championships in Western Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland
Expert and co-editor of the tests in the WebDesign category.
2009 – 2010
Republic and Canton of Jura
Trainee computer programmer
Delémont, Switzerland
Diploma work (see below for more details).
2007 – 2008
Ivimédia SA
Trainee computer programmer
Delémont, Switzerland
Freelancer working on various website projects.
Education
2014 – 2016
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
Master of Science HES-SO in Software Engineering
Lausanne, Switzerland
Average mark of 5.5 / 6 and thesis mark of 6 / 6
Diploma thesis
SIX manages a competitive infrastructure for the Swiss financial center with several business sectors,
including cashless payment transactions. The project aims to create a framework to manage load tests, consistency checks,
crash tests, as well as the simulation of different partners involved in payments. These tests are simulating transactions following
scenarios designed to mimic production. Its modular design allows to create plugins to handle different payments protocols.
Technologies: Java, Java FX, Elastic stack, Docker
2011 – 2014
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
Bachelor of Sciences HES-SO in Computer Science
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Average mark of 5.5 / 6 and thesis mark of 6 / 6
Diploma thesis
The university offers two CUDA servers for its courses about GPGPU.
Like any server, they must periodically go through periods of maintenance, updates or restart if necessary.
These events disrupt the autonomous work of the students when they use the servers.
The project aims to solve this problem by creating a stack of tools to improve
the lives of users by offering a better user experience of those servers.
Technologies: Java, Vaadin, Android, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Datastore, Google Cloud Messaging
2010 – 2011
Technical Division of CEJEF
Federal Vocational Baccalaureate
Porrentruy, Switzerland
Created a startup named IceGlass with the help of GENILEM. Managed to pass through all the process of a product creation (ideation, prototype, mass production, advertisement, selling).
2007 – 2010
School of Technical Trades
Federal Diploma of Vocational Education and Training
Porrentruy, Switzerland
EMT mention for an average mark of 5.6 / 6
Diploma thesis
For years, the Roads and Bridges Department has been developing the New Modfin application, which is used to manage the entire financial
field of bridges and roadways, including the planning of construction sites for the A16 highway. The purpose of this work is first to
improve and correct the problems encountered in the current planning system and also to allow site supervisors to plan for the lots for
which they are responsible. In this way, planning by a site supervisor can then be used as a proposal for general planning.
Technologies: Oracle, WinDev
Languages
French
Native language
English
Full professional proficiency (Cambridge English First - Grade A, corresponding to Level C1)
German
Professional working proficiency (used at work every day)
Certifications
SAFe Agilist (SA)
Knows SAFe framework, how to lead a Lean-Agile transformation, how to support agile teams and programs, how to build a Continuous Delivery Pipeline and how to push a DevOps culture to consistently discover, incorporate, deploy, and deliver value.
Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE FL)
Knows the terminology of Requirements Engineering, Business Analysis, Requirements Management and understands the techniques and methods of Requirements Engineering and their application.
Scrum Master (CSM)
Knows the Scrum framework and team roles, events, artifacts and rules. Creates a work environment towards growth and help the team to ehance performance and remove impediments. Applies those principles with an agile mindset in everyday life.
Courses
Servant Leadership (Sciences Po)
Participated in a course from Sciences Po to learn more about Servant Leadership posture, emotional intelligence and their benefits for the people and their organization.
EMV & Payments Masterclass (UL)
Organized and participated in an internal course from UL Training Academy to learn the technical insights (architecture, flows, cryptography) as well as the benefits for a company to protect itself against fraud.
Fundamentals of Transaction Processing (VISA)
Participated in a course from VISA to learn and understand routing, authorization processing, decision making on behalf of issuers (standin) and clearing & settlement between banks.
Awards
First prize winner at SIX Hackathon
The project of our team, Paymotion, was about bringing emotion to payment services (with a prototype for the Paymit application, now merged with Twint) and won the 2016 edition of the SIX Hackathon.
Swiss runner-up at SwissSkills Championships
Participated multiple times in the SwissSkills Championships in the WebDesign category and won the second place in 2011, third place in 2010 and second place in 2009.
Second place at Worldskills qualification
Participated two times in the WorldSkills qualification to compete with the best three participants from the past two SwissSkills Championships and represent the Switzerland in the WebDesign category. Won two times the second place.