Zulfikar Ditya
Backend & AI Engineer
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About Me
Backend Engineer with 5+ years of experience building reliable, secure, and high-performance backend systems, now extending into applied AI engineering. Demonstrated expertise in clean architecture, scalable API design, and data-intensive workflows using Laravel, Node.js, Bun, and Go. Proven track record of optimizing database performance by 30%, reducing production issues by 75%, and maintaining 99.9% application uptime. Builds retrieval augmented generation pipelines on pgvector and Qdrant, designs system prompts and guardrails, and integrates OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter models into production services with the same reliability discipline applied to any external dependency. Strong foundation in PostgreSQL and MySQL optimization, Redis caching strategies, and cloud deployment with Docker and CI/CD pipelines. Active technical writer with 30+ published articles on Medium reaching 230+ followers.
AI Engineering
Languages
Backend Frameworks
Database Systems
System Architecture
DevOps
Monitoring & Reliability
Frontend (Support Level)
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[Work Experience]
Backend Engineer & AI Engineer Assistant
SUPERFUTUREKOMPANY
Full-timePromoted to AI Engineer Assistant in July 2026 while retaining backend ownership.
AI Engineering
- ›Built retrieval augmented generation pipelines end to end, covering chunking strategy, embedding generation, vector storage and retrieval on pgvector and Qdrant, and context assembly for production LLM features
- ›Designed, versioned, and iterated system prompts and prompt templates, validating behaviour against real user input rather than curated examples
- ›Implemented guardrails across the request path including input validation, output filtering, and prompt injection mitigation, with defined fallback behaviour when a model response cannot be trusted
- ›Integrated OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter models (DeepSeek, Qwen) with retries, timeouts, provider fallback routing, structured logging, and usage tracking
- ›Delivered an AI assistant for enterprise feedback management, handling ingestion, semantic retrieval, and structured summarization across large volumes of customer feedback
- ›Moved long running inference onto queue workers to keep latency sensitive endpoints off the model call path
Backend Engineering
- ›Architected and implemented RESTful APIs across multiple products using Laravel and NestJS, following industry standards for HTTP methods, status codes, and JSON formatting
- ›Built role based authentication and authorization systems hardening security across several internal and client facing applications
- ›Optimized database performance through schema design and strategic indexing, resulting in 30% faster query execution
- ›Integrated third party APIs (Microsoft, WhatsApp, Google) with comprehensive error handling and retry mechanisms
- ›Implemented Redis caching and queue workers for background job processing, significantly reducing response times on heavy endpoints
- ›Established logging and monitoring across services, maintaining 99.9% application uptime through proactive incident handling
- ›Delivered backend services for a campaign and promotion platform supporting large enterprise marketing programs
- ›Built a receipt parsing engine powering a customer loyalty product, including parsing pipelines, validation, and points issuance workflows
- ›Developed conversational bot services on top of the WhatsApp Business API for automated customer interactions
- ›Engineered a multi tenant WhatsApp business messaging platform (channel and inbox style) supporting team based agent workflows
- ›Implemented internationalization (i18n) across backend services and APIs to support multi language product rollouts
- ›Built backend infrastructure for an AI platform management system, including model orchestration, usage tracking, and access control
Information Technology Team Lead
Self Employed
Freelance, Remote- ›Led a team of two web developers on a company profile website, coordinating task distribution and ensuring delivery against scope and timeline
- ›Designed end to end frontend and backend architecture using Next.js and Bun runtime
- ›Configured production server infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines to automate build and deployment
- ›Ran code reviews and established quality standards, delivering a stable, high performance application meeting all client requirements
- ›Contributed hands on to frontend and backend implementation alongside coordinating the team
Mendix Developer
PT Anomali Trans Teknologi
Freelance- ›Delivered a custom Mendix application for PT KAI Indonesia, focusing on rapid low code delivery against critical business deadlines
- ›Collaborated with cross functional teams to translate complex business logic into functional flows within tight delivery windows
Web Developer
Self Employed
Freelance- ›Worked directly with clients to define scope, target users, and required functionality, documenting requirements end to end
- ›Designed wireframes and prototypes iteratively with client feedback
- ›Modeled relational data using MySQL with proper normalization and ERDs for clear table relationships
- ›Built applications using Laravel MVC with Eloquent, Composer, and Pest for unit testing
- ›Used Git for version control and Trello / Notion for Agile task tracking
- ›Set up development, staging, and production environments with CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment
Application Developer Officer
PT Anomali Trans Teknologi
Full-time- ›Designed and optimized PostgreSQL schemas supporting high volume web applications with complex business logic
- ›Built and maintained full stack web applications using Laravel MVC with focus on data integrity and security
- ›Implemented Eloquent ORM for efficient data interactions, reducing code complexity by 25% through proper relationship management
- ›Expanded technical coverage by delivering solutions on Mendix low code platform and ASP.NET
- ›Facilitated alignment between design and product teams to keep technical implementation in step with user requirements
Backend Developer
PT SEJE Digital Utama
Freelance- ›Engineered secure and optimized APIs for data exchange between web applications and external services (Hue Huy, Aku Hadir)
- ›Implemented data validation, sanitization, and encryption to protect against common web vulnerabilities
- ›Authored detailed API documentation and versioning protocols, enabling smooth frontend and third party integration
- ›Designed intuitive endpoint contracts with frontend teams, reducing integration time by 40%
Laravel Developer
Intive Studio
Freelance- ›Built custom ERP applications handling multi currency transactions with 100% accuracy on financial data
- ›Architected efficient database structures supporting complex enterprise business logic
- ›Resolved critical system issues through advanced debugging and code analysis, reducing system downtime by 50%
Web App Developer
Intive Studio
Full-time- ›Core developer on custom ERP web applications, designing scalable architectures for enterprise clients
- ›Implemented ERP modules across Purchase, Sales, Delivery, Invoice, Warehouse, Master Data, Finance, and HR
- ›Mentored junior developers on complex algorithms and Laravel best practices, improving team productivity by 35%
- ›Led code reviews enforcing high quality, maintainable code through rigorous standards
Backend Developer
SEJE Digital
Full-time- ›Conducted thorough QA and testing, reducing production issues by 75% through stronger test coverage
- ›Integrated multiple third party APIs using Laravel, expanding application functionality with robust error handling
- ›Used workflow diagrams to plan and optimize code structure for long term maintainability
Software Engineer Intern
PT Promedia Citra Informatindo
Internship- ›Identified and resolved bugs in production systems, improving overall stability and user satisfaction
- ›Authored technical documentation and user manuals for complex software applications
- ›Built Android applications in Java and developed REST APIs for mobile integration
- ›Worked across both Laravel and Yii frameworks depending on project requirements
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[Open Source_]
Fexend
A VSCode theme and admin dashboard template ecosystem
Clean Starter
Production-ready boilerplate templates with clean architecture
clean-elysia
Clean architecture starter with Elysia.js, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, and BullMQ
clean-hono
Clean architecture starter with Hono, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, and BullMQ
clean-fastify
Clean architecture starter with Fastify, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, and BullMQ
clean-nest-prisma-pg
Clean architecture starter with NestJS, Prisma, and PostgreSQL
clean-nest-drizzle-pg
Clean architecture starter with NestJS, Drizzle ORM, and PostgreSQL
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Blog
Articles published on medium.com/@zulfikarditya
Consuming APIs with Laravel’s HTTP Client: A Practical Guide
Almost every modern application needs to talk to something outside itself: a payment gateway, a shipping provider, an SMS service, an internal microservice. For years PHP developers reached for cURL d…
Barrel — The Quiet Pattern That Cleans Up Your Elysia Imports
You open src/modules/auth/index.ts and the imports stretch past your screen. Repository here, service there, validator two folders up, types from somewhere else, errors from libs. You scroll past it e…
Building a NestJS Starter That Doesn’t Make You Want to Rewrite Everything in Six Months
I have started too many NestJS projects. Each time, I told myself it would be different. I would set up authentication properly from the beginning, implement proper error handling, configure caching c…
Building a Scalable Queue System in ElysiaJS with BullMQ
Modern web applications often need to handle tasks that shouldn’t block the main request-response cycle — sending emails, processing images, generating reports, or syncing data with third-party APIs. …
Queues Are Not Optional: Scaling Laravel Without Blocking Requests
Laravel makes it incredibly easy to build features quickly. But when traffic grows, many Laravel applications start to feel slow, unreliable, or even fragile. More often than not, the problem isn’t La…
PM2 Ecosystem Setup Guide for Node.js/NestJS
PM2 is a production-grade process manager for Node.js applications that provides zero-downtime reloads, monitoring, and clustering capabilities. An ecosystem file (ecosystem.config.js) allows you to d…
Building a Stateless Laravel Application on AWS (PHP 8.4 & Laravel 12)
If your Laravel application runs on a single server, state is simple. Sessions live in files, cache sits in memory, uploads land on disk. Everything works until it doesn’t.
Laravel Pipeline for Input Sanitization: Safe, Reusable, and Fast
A practical guide to what the Laravel Pipeline is, when to use it (and when not), plus a step-by-step build for HTML/script sanitizing user input.
Mastering Laravel Nested Controllers
Ever struggled to organize deeply related models in Laravel? Imagine building a project management app where each project has tasks, each task has sub-tasks, and yes — those sub-tasks can have their o…
Stop Passing Arrays: Laravel DTOs for Third-Party API Payloads
Replace messy associative arrays with typed DTOs in your Laravel service layer. Cut bugs by 60%, improve testability, and ship cleaner API integrations.