Muhammad Hanif

Muhammad Hanif / Lead software engineer / Jakarta

I build products users love and systems teams can scale.

I work across the stack and shape foundations and culture that help the product and the team scale.

See selected workStart a conversation

Open to lead engineering roles and selected consulting work

What I buildFrontend / backend / teams
  1. 01

    Product experiences

    React, React Native, design systems

  2. 02

    Frontend foundations

    Monorepos, standards, CI/CD

  3. 03

    Backend and APIs

    Node.js BFFs, APIs, SQL

  4. 04

    Engineering teams

    Technical direction, mentoring, delivery

10+
years building products
1M
peak daily game users
40%
smaller game bundle
3+
years leading frontend engineers

Selected work

Better products. Stronger foundations.

Three examples of improving the experience for users and the foundations that help teams keep shipping.

Xenith

Lead Frontend Engineer

ImpactBuilding the team and the product from the groundwork into scale

Building delightful products for merchants, their users, and the people managing the platform.

Joined as the founding engineer, shaping a foundation that scaled across three products while growing the team and building a strong engineering culture.

How it connects
  1. 01

    2 dashboards + end-user product

  2. 02

    Xenith UI + monorepo

  3. 03

    CI/CD + AWS edge + Node.js BFF

What was needed
Two dashboards and one end-user product needed a consistent experience, shared frontend standards, and reliable releases as the platform grew.
What I changed
Built Xenith UI, the frontend monorepo, engineering standards, and CI/CD; managed frontend delivery through S3, CloudFront, and Route53; and added Node.js BFF APIs.
What improved
Three products now share the same design system, monorepo, standards, and release foundations, giving engineers one place to maintain the frontend platform.
  • Design system
  • Monorepo
  • Node.js BFF
  • CloudFront

Shopee Games

Expert Engineer / Team Lead

Impact1M daily users / 40% smaller bundle

Keeping a regional game platform fast for one million daily users.

Led five engineers building and operating a React-based Monopoly game across independently released regions.

How it connects
  1. 01

    Regional builds

  2. 02

    Version router

  3. 03

    Independent releases

What was needed
Players across regions needed different campaigns and game versions, while active campaigns had to keep running during new releases.
What I changed
Led five engineers and built the frontend multiversion library and Webpack foundation so regions could release independently with lighter bundles.
What improved
Supported one million daily users at peak, reduced bundle size by 40 percent, and reduced deployments blocked by active campaigns by 50 percent.
  • React
  • Webpack
  • Delivery systems
  • Leadership

Gojek / Midtrans

Senior Frontend Engineer

ImpactReact migration without disrupting merchants

Making "moving fast without breaking things" happen.

Helped move a mature Rails merchant dashboard toward React while merchants and the product team continued using the existing application.

How it connects
  1. 01

    Rails merchant dashboard

  2. 02

    React bridge + Asphalt

  3. 03

    Incremental modernization

What was needed
Merchants still depended on the Rails product while the team needed a safer path to modern React interfaces and better frontend development workflows.
What I changed
Built bridge components for React inside Rails, contributed Asphalt design-system components, replaced CRA with custom Webpack, improved CI/CD, and guided frontend testing practices.
What improved
The team could introduce React incrementally without disrupting merchant workflows or stopping feature delivery in the existing product.
  • React
  • Rails
  • Webpack
  • Design system

Consulting

Focused work. Meaningful improvements.

I work with product teams on focused improvements across product interfaces, engineering foundations, delivery, and team practices.

Ieko Media

Full-stack Engineer ConsultantThree-month engagement

Lower infrastructure cost, faster releases, and clearer engineering foundations.

Worked across frontend, backend, and DevOps while mentoring the engineering team and replacing an increasingly expensive managed platform.

$700+ → <$100
monthly infrastructure cost
10 → 5 min
deployment time

Moved the platform to Docker, Caddy, Portainer, and a DigitalOcean Droplet; introduced automated CI/CD; and created a reusable monorepo foundation with shared development guidelines.

  • Full stack
  • DevOps
  • Monorepo
  • Mentoring

DesignFiles.co

Frontend Engineer ConsultantJun 2021 - Dec 2022

Bringing modern product experiences to a mature Rails stack.

Worked as the company’s only frontend consultant inside a mature Rails codebase, using Ruby templates, Sass, Gulp, and vanilla JavaScript without relying on a framework rewrite.

Made the core application responsive across mobile and desktop and built an interactive video-tutorial experience, delivering modern UX within the constraints of a proven legacy stack.

  • Ruby templates
  • Sass
  • Gulp
  • Vanilla JavaScript
  • Legacy modernization

Career

A decade across products, platforms, and teams.

Recent roles are shown in detail; earlier work traces the path from mobile SDKs to technical leadership.

  1. Xenith

    Lead Frontend Engineer / Full-stack Engineer

    Cross-border payments, design systems, frontend monorepos, Node.js BFF APIs, and frontend delivery on AWS.

    May 2024 - Present

  2. Fungsi

    Founder / Independent AI Engineer

    An independent lab for coding agents, AI gateways, application deployment, and low-cost infrastructure.

    Nov 2025 - May 2026

  3. Gojek / Midtrans

    Senior Frontend Engineer

    Payment product modernization and incremental frontend migration.

    Apr 2022 - Jun 2023

  4. Shopee Games

    Expert Software Engineer / Team Lead

    High-traffic game systems, regional delivery, performance, and team leadership.

    Apr 2020 - Jan 2022

Earlier work

Earlier work included property platforms, React Native commerce products, and a live-streaming app with a custom native iOS beauty-filter module.

Writing

Notes from the workbench.

Experiments, systems, and lessons that became clearer once written down.

Browse every article

  1. Rough Edges in Today's AI Agents for Frontend Development

    Where frontend agents still break down, and the browser and tooling changes that could make them more capable.

  2. Memory in Javascript

    three funny words, honestly.

Start a conversation

Building a product that needs to scale?

I’m open to lead engineering roles and selected consulting work across frontend, backend, platform foundations, and delivery.

Email me

Or email directly[email protected]