Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Join the team rewriting the rules of embedded finance.Are you a builder at heart who has evolved into a systems thinker? Do you believe that the best technical leadership comes from credibility? As part of a generational hand-over, we are looking for a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who represents our Engineering and IT System Management teams within the executive team while remaining rooted in our technical ‘Architecture Guild’.At YAPEAL, we haven’t just entered the market; we’ve redefined Embedded Finance. Recently recognized by BILANZ as the country's most innovative financial SME, we were the first Fintech to secure our own FINMA license. The foundation is built. Now, we are scaling through our B2B2X model.We need a hybrid leader: Someone who can drive feature delivery while designing a resilient architecture that scales to meet the demand of our partners.About The Role:You take end-to-end accountability for YAPEAL’s technical and architectural strategy. Your mission is to balance three core pillars:building out features on our platform with ‘bank-grade’ resilience,ensuring frictionless go-live and connectivity with our B2B partners, andmaintaining a 'Digital Fort Knox' that upholds the trust of our partners and regulators deserve.As a member of the executive team, you are a mentor who ensures our engineering teams have clarity, tools, and autonomy to deliver value fast, while actively fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional development.You’re not scared to get your hands dirty and routinely participate in the day-to-day engineering of our solutions. You lead from code, not just spreadsheets. By staying active in architecture, spikes, and code reviews, you ground your strategic decisions in engineering reality. You also act as the vital link between the board of directors and engineering, championing a high-trust culture where technical excellence enables business agility.Expect a Day Full of:Active guild participation: Leading the Architecture Guild to define technical standards and ensure today's decisions don't become tomorrow's bottlenecks by continuously identifying and mitigating technology risks (stability, scalability, and security).Operational excellence: Ensuring the stable and efficient operation of our services. You don’t just 'run' systems; you drive a culture where 99.9x% availability and automated self-recovery are the baseline for our B2B2X scaling strategy.API & integration excellence: Championing a 'developer-first' API strategy. You ensure our interfaces are so intuitive and well-documented that partner-onboarding becomes a seamless self-service, drastically reducing time-to-market for our B2B2X clients.Security as a product: Leading the charge on cyber resilience. You treat security and data privacy not as a checklist, but as a core feature that exceeds FINMA standards and provides our partners with absolute peace of mind.AI-driven excellence: Leveraging AI to optimize engineering workflows, operations, and decision-making.Hands-on, enabling leadership: Focusing on organizational throughput rather than personal productivity. You understand what slows down delivery teams and proactively remove those impediments, all the while contributing as a developer in high leverage areas.Cross-functional alignment: Collaborating with the Chief Solutions Officer (CSO) and Product Managers to integrate technical requirements into the core roadmap. You use your builder’s intuition to prioritize scale-critical work and protect the long-term health of the platform.Financial stewardship: Managing the unit economics of our tech decisions, from cloud cost dynamics to the ROI of automation.Who We’re Looking For:Cloud-native: You are a veteran of modern, distributed ecosystems. Whether it’s Google Cloud, Kubernetes, or event-driven Go/Java, you know how to architect for high availability, operational efficiency, and observability in a world that never sleeps.Scaling for the "next zero": You have experience moving from thousands to millions of transactions. You understand that scaling a high-frequency financial ledger is a game of precision, and you know how to hunt down bottlenecks before they hit the bottom line.B2B2X API strategist: You treat APIs as your storefront. You have a proven track record of designing "developer-first" interfaces and modular integration layers that allow B2B partners to scale their financial offerings with zero friction.Master of financial Value flows: You have experience handling complex payment rails and card processing environments. You understand the technical intricacies of money movement, from clearing to reconciliation, ensuring every transaction is accurate and secure.Organizational architect: You scale culture as well as systems. You actively drive hiring strategies, team building, and career development so that a 100-person engineering team feels just as autonomous and empowered as a 10-person squad.Compliance as code: You don’t see regulations as a speedbump, but as a requirement for trust. You have navigated FINMA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS by building automated guardrails rather than manual gates.Ecosystem & "build vs. buy" decider: You rationalize the "build vs. buy" trade-off and clearly communicate your decision across the organisation. You can manage critical third-party integrations from BaaS providers to payment rails, ensuring our external partners are as resilient and cost-effective as our internal code, while proactively managing vendor dependencies and technology risks.Resilient leader: You navigate ambiguity and tight timelines with ease, making fast, comprehensible decisions.Our tech stackDevelopment: Go, JS, Python, FlutterCloud: GCP, K8SCI/CD: Jenkins, ArgoCDNetworking: SDN, SSFN, mTLSWhy Join YAPEAL?At YAPEAL, we’re on a mission to transform the future of finance, and we’re looking for visionaries like you to join our journey. Here’s why YAPEAL is maybe your place to be:A Culture of Innovation and FlexibilityBe part of a collaborative, forward-thinking team that values creativity, flexibility, and customer success. At YAPEAL, every idea matters, and every voice counts. We give our people all the flexibility they need to thrive and succeed.Unmatched Growth OpportunitiesAs an expanding company, your contribution will directly shape our success and market presence. This is your chance to grow with us and make a tangible impact on the future of finance.If this sounds like the challenge you’ve been waiting for, we’d love to hear from you.About UsBased in Zurich, Switzerland, YAPEAL is revolutionizing the financial landscape with our embedded finance solutions. We empower businesses to seamlessly integrate financial services into their products, enhancing customer experiences and unlocking new revenue streams. Combining cutting-edge technology with Swiss reliability, we’re setting a new standard for digital finance. Join us in building a future that’s uniquely dependable, and consistently innovative.