Meet Julien Groselle: SwissBorg’s Senior DevOps Engineer

Julien Groselle has a big smile to match his character. More outgoing than most of his fellow programmers and engineers, it comes as no surprise that he was born and raised in the sunny and animated streets of Marseille. Growing up as a sporty kid and a big fan of OM (Olympique de Marseille) football club, which is more a religion than a sports team, he shares with his hometown’s legendary team both drive and ambition.

As a boy, his second passion (after football) became computing when he received his first computer at fourteen. Fascinated by the small machine that could do so much, Julien was smitten and devoted his studies to learning everything he could about the “small machine that did so much.” After receiving his high school diploma in Science and Industrial Technologies (STI), he attended the University of Aix-Marseille where he received his bachelor’s in science and spent another year specialising in System and Network Administration and Security. After a year of work/study in Marseille, it was time for him to move away from the security of home and explore career options, he moved to Strasbourg where he began consulting for a big company that is a leader in the large-scale digitalisation of Europe STERIA.

At STERIA for two and half years Julien was assigned to France Telecom as Linux System Administrator where he gained invaluable experience. Devoted to the open source software and operating systems because it is free, the source code is open to everyone, allowing all to discuss and share solutions, Julien believes, “security is only possible when there is total transparency. That is why I always oriented my career towards open sourcing, interaction and collaboration is vital to computing.”

His boss in France Telecom encouraged him to pursue his master’s degree while working. Julien received his Engineering Diploma (master’s degree) in Information Technology and began working for The Council of Europe at STERIA as a systems engineer where he helped securing and expanding their systems.

Four years ago, he decided to move to Switzerland when he was offered a job working as a Linux engineer and developer at FastNet SA. Next, Julien went to work at SICPA as an infrastructure engineer. He tells me that it is an amusing coincidence that he worked for a company that makes ink for paper money just before he joined us in the world of crypto.

When asked how he came to join SwissBorg and the world of blockchain and crypto, he responds, “one of my colleagues at SICPA was an enthusiast. Every day we spoke about cryptos and blockchain technology. Over a year ago, I learned about blockchain and cryptos. I also liked the idea of having more control over my own money. As an open source engineer, I feel comfortable here and love the decentralised nature and the transparent community-centric character of this space.”

Nicolas Rémond, our CTO, recruited Julien to work at SwissBorg. He had never worked in a startup before and loves what he calls the ‘rawness’ of the job. Julien believes that “to start on a project from the beginning, from scratch, is very challenging and exciting, I love being part of the decision-making process.”

At thirty-three years of age, Julien Groselle has almost ten years of career experience that he brings to SwissBorg. As a Senior DevOps Engineer, he possesses the perfect set of skills, between his experience as a developer and an operations engineer, to provide the infrastructure to build, develop, and operate the SwissBorg App. He works on all aspects of our app from backend to infrastructure performance, “it is a dream in the computing world to be there at the beginning of the project, to start from scratch, I love being the firefighter in the frontlines of this exciting venture.”