# Luthfi Arifin — Product Engineer, Founder & Tech Researcher

> Muhammad Luthfi Arifin — Product Engineer, Founder & Tech Researcher in Jakarta. I engineer state-of-the-art AI (LLMs, RAG, agents) into practical products.

Canonical page: https://laam.my.id/
Last updated: 2026-10-14

- **Name:** Muhammad Luthfi Arifin
- **Roles:** Product Engineer, Founder, Tech Researcher, Tech-Business Strategist
- **Location:** Jakarta, Indonesia
- **Email:** marifinluthfi@gmail.com

**Amidst the rapid advancement of state-of-the-art AI research, the biggest challenge is no longer the theory — it is the lack of real-world application of these advanced models into practical, everyday solutions. My focus is bridging that gap: engineering intelligent, user-centric systems that automate workflows, amplify productivity, and deliver measurable business impact.** Beyond the code, I build experiences.

Software Engineer and Product Strategist with 5+ years building scalable, mobile-first, full-stack products. My core focus is Applied AI — harnessing LLMs, RAG, Agentic Workflows and Multimodal models to ship practical tools that solve real problems, not chase theoretical AGI.

## Bridging the gap between AI research and everyday utility.

While state-of-the-art AI models have achieved incredible capabilities, there is still a massive gap in bringing these advancements into practical, everyday use. I am deeply passionate about bridging this divide — harnessing the power of LLMs, RAG, and Agentic Workflows to build intuitive, user-centric tools that solve real-world problems.

Guided by the "Beyond The Code" philosophy, I believe that writing code is just the baseline. The true challenge lies in engineering intelligent systems that deliver intuitive experiences and scale effectively.

**Focus:** Applied AI · Product Strategy · Engineering Excellence

## Featured experience

### Founder — Abadikan & Abadikan Studio

- **Period:** Jan 2025 – Present
- **Location:** Jakarta, Indonesia (Hybrid)
- **Details:** [full role breakdown](https://laam.my.id/experience/abadikan.md)

Leading a digital innovation venture across event technology and a premium web-experience studio — turning static digital presence into high-conversion interactive experiences.

- Abadikan Studio: strategic partner for ambitious hospitality, property and premium-event brands, engineering immersive web experiences (React, Vite, GSAP) built on attention psychology.
- Digital Sales Enablement (Alana case study): replaced static wedding-package PDFs with a "Live Interactive Catalog" web walkthrough.
- Event Tech: pioneered immersive digital invitations with secure, integrated "Gift Registry" payment gateways.

**Impact:** 3× longer exploration time · +40% more ready to book · −50% basic sales questions

**Stack:** React, Vite, GSAP, Payment Gateways, Brand Strategy

### Product Engineer — Tech in Asia

- **Period:** Apr 2024 – Present
- **Location:** Jakarta, Indonesia (Remote)
- **Details:** [full role breakdown](https://laam.my.id/experience/techinasia.md)

A two-year climb at Southeast Asia’s largest tech-media company — from owning the mobile app v2.0 rebuild to bridging engineering and product strategy with Applied AI.

- Revamped the mobile app v2.0 end-to-end — +611% average session length and +120% daily active users.
- Promoted to Product Engineer to lead R&D and next-gen feature innovation across cross-functional teams.
- AI Engineering: built and maintained Python services powering the new Text-to-Speech (TTS) feature.

**Impact:** +611% avg. session length · +120% daily active users · TTS AI feature shipped

**Stack:** Flutter, Dart, Python, Clean Architecture, TTS / Audio AI, Product Strategy

### Co-Founder & CTO — WIGO

- **Period:** Jul 2021 – Dec 2024
- **Location:** Jakarta, Indonesia (Hybrid)
- **Details:** [full role breakdown](https://laam.my.id/experience/wigo.md)

Built a comprehensive B2B/B2C tourism SaaS ecosystem from the ground up, connecting travelers with destinations across Indonesia.

- Architected full-stack, cross-platform solutions (Flutter, NestJS, Docker, MySQL, AWS ECS).
- Integrated secure payment gateways (Xendit) and e-wallets (Finnet) for thousands of users.
- Built a Metabase analytics dashboard to accelerate stakeholder decisions.

**Impact:** B2B/B2C SaaS ecosystem · 0→1 architected from scratch

**Stack:** Flutter, NestJS, Docker, MySQL, AWS ECS, Xendit

### Android Team Lead — Happy5

- **Period:** May 2020 – Oct 2023
- **Location:** Jakarta, Indonesia (Remote)
- **Details:** [full role breakdown](https://laam.my.id/experience/happy5.md)

Grew from intern to Team Lead over 3.5 years, leading a distributed Android engineering team for a culture & performance management platform.

- Promoted twice — intern → engineer → team lead — across a 3.5-year tenure.
- Led a distributed Android team: sprint planning, mentorship, and enforced code quality.
- Built CI/CD (CircleCI, Fastlane) and drove a major refactor to Clean Architecture.

**Impact:** Lead distributed team · CI/CD CircleCI + Fastlane

**Stack:** Kotlin, Android, CircleCI, Fastlane, Clean Architecture

## Featured projects

- [**VizMind AI**](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11308750?ref=https://laam.my.id) — PDF → interactive visual mind maps
- [**Hangout AI**](https://devpost.com/software/hangout-ai?ref=https://laam.my.id) — AI travel planner across 500+ spots
- [**Tikeetron**](https://devpost.com/software/tikeetron?ref=https://laam.my.id) — AI-first, fraud-proof event marketplace
- [**Localize AI**](https://devpost.com/software/localizeai?ref=https://laam.my.id) — Find cafes by text or image

## Career timeline

- **2019 · Freelance Lead Engineer, uDagang & client projects** — The trailhead — leading a ride-hailing & marketplace build end-to-end.
- **2020 · Android Engineer → Team Lead, Happy5** — From intern to leading a distributed Android team; CI/CD & Clean Architecture.
- **2021 · Co-Founder & CTO, WIGO** — Architected a B2B/B2C tourism SaaS ecosystem from 0 → 1.
- **2024 · Mobile Flutter Engineer, Tech in Asia** — Led the v2.0 migration — +611% session length, +120% DAU.
- **2025 · Founder & Product Engineer, Abadikan · Tech in Asia** — The current peak — Applied AI, immersive web, and product strategy.

## Community & ecosystem

- **Expert Jury — Dinas Pendidikan DKI Jakarta** (The Judge, May 2022 – Present) — Appointed to judge the Provincial & Regional Student Competency Competitions (LKS) in IT Software Solutions for Business.
- **Podcasts, Webinars & Tech Talks** (The Speaker, Ongoing) — Guest on TiDB “Data in the Hallway” (Vector DBs & RAG), speaker at Nakoding (Flutter productivity) and Tech Speaker at SMKN 26 Jakarta.
- **Educator at SMKN 10 & 26 Jakarta** (The Mentor, Ongoing) — Crafted curriculums and mentored the next generation of software talent.

## Writing & press

- [**Building Conditional LLM Agent Workflows with LangGraph**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/building-conditional-llm-agent-workflows-with-langgraph) — Level Up Coding, Jun 11, 2025. A step-by-step guide to building intelligent AI — from a “Hello World” example to Tikeetron’s agent workflows.
- [**How Multimodal AI Actually Works: CLIP, Vector Embeddings & LLMs Explained**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/how-multimodal-ai-actually-works-clip-vector-embeddings-and-llms-explained) — AI Advances, May 29, 2025. Unpacking the magic behind AI that understands both images and text, grounded in real-world projects.
- [**Building a RAG-Powered Hackathon-Winning App**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/building-a-rag-powered-hackathon-winning-app) — Level Up Coding, Nov 21, 2024. Crafting personalized travel itineraries with Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Vector Search.
- [**Boosting Flutter Productivity Through Modularization**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/boosting-flutter-productivity-through-modularization) — Level Up Coding, Feb 5, 2024. Scaling Flutter codebases with a modular architecture for faster builds and cleaner team ownership.
- [**Eliminating UI Jank: Flutter Concurrency with Isolate & Compute**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/eliminating-ui-jank-flutter-concurrency-with-isolate-and-compute) — Level Up Coding, Jan 23, 2024. Explore isolates and compute functions to optimize Flutter UI performance and responsiveness.
- [**Building a Secure Google Sign-In with Flutter & Node.js**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/building-a-secure-google-sign-in-with-flutter-and-node-js-for-backend) — Level Up Coding, Dec 10, 2023. Strengthening Google authentication and data protection in your Flutter mobile app.
- [**Flutter Web Responsive: Adaptive UIs for Mobile, Tablet & Web**](https://luthfiarifin.medium.com/flutter-web-responsive-crafting-adaptive-uis-for-mobile-tablet-and-web) — Stackademic, Oct 3, 2023. Unlock Flutter for the web with responsive design techniques across breakpoints.