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Powering GudangAda’s Engineering Team: How Irfan Takes Every Challenge to Grow

Posted in Inside GudangAda Mar 12, 2020
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In 2020, GudangAda welcomed Tri Ahmad Irfan to the technology team. Irfan brought his vast experience in computer science and software engineering to grow GudangAda. Today, Irfan and the engineering team are part of the backbones of GudangAda that support the company’s nationwide business operations.

Irfan’s interest in software engineering started in high school where he grew curious about how computers work and how to build programs. In high school, he competed in various computer science and programming competitions at the regional and national level, earning himself medals in the process.

While pursuing his Computer Science degree, Irfan spent his free time coaching high school students participating in the National Computer Science Olympiad (Olimpiade Sains Nasional). He shared his learnings to strengthen the students’ programming, logic, mathematics, and algorithms skills — all concepts that are important for them to learn, thrive, and win.

He also decided to pursue a career further in the tech industry by applying to tech companies abroad. Good news arrived when he got a call from Twitter, the popular social media company. Little did he know that his teaching experience helped him in getting a job at Twitter. All the programming practices he did with his students were similar to what was asked during the interviews. Finally, Irfan flew to Silicon Valley, worked for Twitter, and that was the beginning of his tech career.

“Silicon Valley is like the ‘Mecca’ for tech people — it’s the center of the tech world. Having the opportunity to work there was like a dream come true. I made the most of my time there. At night and on the weekends I’m not working, I joined tech communities, participated in hackathons, and attended conferences. It was a good adrenaline rush for me. I got to chat and meet many engineers who lived and breathed technology. Even in unlikely places such as public transports and dining halls, people would talk about the most hyped startups, the newest programming languages, and other fascinating topics. It was such a valuable experience,” said Irfan in retelling his story.

The experience of how technologies are built in Silicon Valley inspired Irfan to help grow the tech industry in his home country — Indonesia. He hopes that one day everyone can all talk about technology as part of their daily lives. Irfan’s mission is to build ‘Silicon Valley’ in Indonesia.

Irfan’s Life at GudangAda

Irfan has been playing an instrumental role in digitizing and automating the field operations of GudangAda. Every day, he asks this simple question to help him grow: what else can I do to automate our business processes and make the life of our field operations people — such as drivers and warehouse workers — easier? “In any projects I do, I make sure that I support the teams who work directly with our customers by providing them with technology. My role is to make their job easier so they can serve our buyers and sellers better.”

Together with the team, Irfan has successfully developed several products, including an app that manages drivers’ routes to deliver our orders promptly. For instance, let’s say one driver must deliver orders to 20 different destinations in one go, then the app will propose the route based on various factors such as location, vehicle capacity, and the destination’s working hours. His team also built other products like warehouse management system, logistics pricing tools, and delivery monitoring system.

“I feel content when our ideas are being applied and proven to improve our business process. When this happens, I feel challenged to keep on innovating and finding ways to grow our business.”

When asked about the defining characteristics of GudangAda’s teams, Irfan has this to say: “I feel the teamwork between the business team and the engineering team is very productive. We exchange a lot of ideas, collaborate on bringing technologies to the market, and bring each others’ expertise to the table.”

Do you share Irfan’s passion in growing the B2B tech company? Come join the team. Explore our career opportunities here.

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