The Story Behind the Systems

🎓 Background: Science from ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology)

With a background in Science from ITB, I was trained in rigorous analytical thinking and systems-level problem decomposition. I approach automation not as "connecting tools," but as designing reliable, cost-efficient, and scalable system architecture — the way an engineer would.

⚡ Career Acceleration: From Solo Developer to IT Manager in 4 Months

I started my career teaching critical thinking, growth mindset, memorization techniques, and STEM to children — designing my own educational programs and modules from scratch. A few months after I resigned, the Director of the former education company trusted me as an external freelancer to build a custom operational dashboard, making them my very first client.

This success led to me being hired as the first dedicated IT resource at a growing multi-brand company. By replacing scattered spreadsheets and manual processes with custom internal web systems, structured databases, centralized Looker Studio dashboards, and automated data pipelines — I was promoted to IT Manager in just 4 months. In this leadership role, I took full charge of technology operations, expanding our stack into self-hosted n8n infrastructure, AI agent workflows, Synology NAS storage, and robust DevOps.

🔥 Real Efficiency: 40,000+ Automated Transactions (Operations & E-Commerce)

When the company faced a critical operational transition that required downsizing manual fulfillment staff, I engineered E-Commerce Engine, a high-volume event-driven automation system to process high-throughput transaction pipelines. This system successfully processed 40,000+ automated transactions in its first year and cut manual admin workload by 75%, allowing the business to scale capacity simply by upgrading server resources — not headcount.

🌐 Production Scale: 53,000+ Voucher Redemptions

I served as the lead engineer for a public-facing Voucher Redemption Web App running 24/7. In its first year, the system processed 53,000+ successful redemptions and opened an entirely new revenue stream by facilitating 1,300+ direct web transactions.

It serves as the final step of the order automation loop: customers buy on the marketplace → the E-Commerce Engine automatically dispatches access codes → customers redeem them instantly on this web application.

⚙️ Infrastructure Ownership: Zero-SaaS Cost & Custom Deploys

I pioneered the transition from costly third-party SaaS to self-hosted, open-source infrastructure — a capability I built entirely independently. To maximize memory and resource efficiency, I built custom Docker-Compose stacks for lightweight, highly concurrent, parallel workflow execution.

I set up self-hosted n8n instances, deployed 9router for cost-optimized AI model routing, and utilized Cloudflare tunnels and DNS failover for secure zero-downtime routing. I also managed Portainer, WAHA (WhatsApp API gateway), and Supabase databases to run custom automation crons and internal web tools. By hosting our AI-powered HRIS on an on-premise Synology NAS and routing it via WAHA with free-tier AI models, I helped the company completely eliminate recurring SaaS subscriptions for employee attendance and daily reporting.

💻 From Workflows to Systems: Why I Obsess Over Self-Hosting

Most people know n8n as an automation SaaS. But I have always been fascinated by what becomes possible when you run automation on infrastructure you completely control.

I have personally benchmarked and deployed self-hosted n8n across wildly different environments — from high-spec Cloud VMs and private VPS clusters, to Synology NAS appliances, all the way down to a $14 Android TV box running Armbian Linux via Docker Compose. While testing on a TV box was a fun experiment in extreme resource efficiency, it proved an essential engineering truth: self-hosting isn't just about avoiding subscription fees; it is about taking full ownership of your execution runtime.

In my production architectures, this unlocks three key advantages:

• Redis Queue Mode & Worker Concurrency: Workloads are queued into Redis and processed asynchronously by dedicated Docker workers. Sudden execution spikes never crash or drop, and concurrency limits are governed by hardware capacity — not arbitrary pricing tiers.
• System-Level Orchestration via CLI & Python: By extending n8n to execute shell commands, Python scripts, and secure SSH tunnels, n8n ceases to be a simple API connector. It actively orchestrates systems — health-checking servers, managing Docker containers, executing CLI tools, and coordinating multi-agent loops such as Claude Code.
• Cloud & Hardware Agnosticism: Whether a business operates on Hetzner, AWS, an on-premise private server, or an office Synology NAS behind Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnels, the entire operational brain runs on their private terms with zero vendor lock-in.

"I started with n8n to automate workflows. Today, I use it to orchestrate systems."

Across lifetime deployments, I have orchestrated over 600,000+ production executions with verified 99.9%+ reliability (~25,000+ weekly runs), stress-tested via k6 at sustained peaks of 1,500+ requests per minute with 0% data drop. Ready-to-deploy architecture blueprints and turnkey setup packages are available in the Self-Hosted n8n Infrastructure Catalog.

🤝 Business Empathy: Global Collaboration with Founders

I have worked directly with CEOs, Founders, and Directors across France, Greece, and Southeast Asia. Working across diverse industries (including sustainability startups, digital marketing agencies, retail e-commerce, real estate, and IT consulting) has taught me to translate cross-border business bottlenecks into robust technical solutions, aligning every automation with financial efficiency and bottom-line operational scale.