AI & Platform Engineering Manager
MichaelTohar
Starts with building a Foundation, ends with Innovation and Productivity. Leading cross-functional teams to build resilient, scalable systems — from infrastructure to AI-powered platforms.
About Me
Platform Engineering Manager with 9+ years of experience spanning infrastructure, DevOps, and AI-driven platform engineering in high-scale e-commerce environments. I progressed from intern to Assistant Manager, building and leading cross-functional teams while delivering 30+ AI/automation projects across departments.
I built a custom high-performance Rust-based platform framework, launched an internal AI platform that centralized all AI operations, and developed multi-agent LLM/RAG systems — all while maintaining 99.9% SLA and a project portfolio exceeding $10M/yr in value.
I operate at the intersection of engineering, infrastructure, and business — bridging technology with strategy. From cloud migrations and Kubernetes at scale to intelligent automation and AI copilots, I build systems that are resilient, scalable, and aligned with organizational goals, while empowering teams to innovate faster.
9+Years in Engineering
5+Years at Shopee
3Leadership Roles
30+Projects Delivered
Skills & Expertise
Team Management
Coaching & Mentoring
Stakeholder Management
OKR & Roadmap Planning
Budgeting & ROI Analysis
Cost Optimization
Architecture Review
Agile / Scrum
LLM Gateway
RAG Systems
Multi-Agent Systems
Prompt Engineering
AI Workflow Orchestration
Web Scraping
Kubernetes
Google Cloud (GCP)
Docker
Helm Charts
VMware
Linux
Hadoop & Presto
Terraform
Ansible
CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI)
Monitoring & Alerting
Splunk & Elastic Stack
SLA & Incident Management
Python
Rust
Go
SQL
Next.js & React
Temporal & Airflow
PostgreSQL
SurrealDB
MongoDB
OpenSearch
Experience
Assistant Manager — AI Strategy & Platform Engineering
Shopee
Aug 2025 — Present
- Led the team's pivot into AI-driven platform engineering, establishing the AI project lifecycle from ideation to production
- Delivered 30+ AI/automation projects across 4+ departments with 90–95% accuracy, spanning compliance, dispute resolution, document extraction, and marketing intelligence
- Built multi-agent LLM systems with $0 model cost via on-prem deployment, reducing AI operational costs by up to 91%
- Developed RAG-based assistants, SQL copilots, and unified intelligence dashboards serving multiple business functions
- Conducted AI workshops across all departments, driving productivity improvements and AI adoption organization-wide
- Own engineering budgeting and deliver initiatives targeting ≥5× ROI — total portfolio value exceeds +$10M/yr
Aug 2025 — Present
Assistant Manager — AI Strategy & Platform Engineering
Shopee
Aug 2025 — Present
- Led the team's pivot into AI-driven platform engineering, establishing the AI project lifecycle from ideation to production
- Delivered 30+ AI/automation projects across 4+ departments with 90–95% accuracy, spanning compliance, dispute resolution, document extraction, and marketing intelligence
- Built multi-agent LLM systems with $0 model cost via on-prem deployment, reducing AI operational costs by up to 91%
- Developed RAG-based assistants, SQL copilots, and unified intelligence dashboards serving multiple business functions
- Conducted AI workshops across all departments, driving productivity improvements and AI adoption organization-wide
- Own engineering budgeting and deliver initiatives targeting ≥5× ROI — total portfolio value exceeds +$10M/yr
Feb 2025 — Jul 2025
Assistant Manager — Platform Engineering
Shopee
Feb 2025 — Jul 2025
- Led and mentored a 6-person cross-functional engineering team, fostering ownership, delivery, and technical excellence
- Built a custom high-performance Rust HTTP/worker framework (io_uring, async runtime) with <200ms API response time, serving as backbone for all new platform services
- Launched internal AI platform with RBAC, agent marketplace, and self-service AI tools — OKR target of 200+ DAU
- Built centralized LLM budget and routing gateway, stress-tested at 1,000 concurrent requests
- Led workflow orchestration migration from on-prem Airflow to GKE (cloud-managed Kubernetes)
- Completed legacy data access migration — retired JDBC access across 34 data services
Assistant Manager — Platform Engineering
Shopee
Feb 2025 — Jul 2025
- Led and mentored a 6-person cross-functional engineering team, fostering ownership, delivery, and technical excellence
- Built a custom high-performance Rust HTTP/worker framework (io_uring, async runtime) with <200ms API response time, serving as backbone for all new platform services
- Launched internal AI platform with RBAC, agent marketplace, and self-service AI tools — OKR target of 200+ DAU
- Built centralized LLM budget and routing gateway, stress-tested at 1,000 concurrent requests
- Led workflow orchestration migration from on-prem Airflow to GKE (cloud-managed Kubernetes)
- Completed legacy data access migration — retired JDBC access across 34 data services
Assistant Manager — Data Infrastructure
Shopee
Jan 2023 — Feb 2025
- Made strategic decisions regarding infrastructure changes impacting 50+ production systems
- Managed Infra Team to maintain Server SLA at 99.9%
- Established a platform solving internal problems through automation and PaaS, reducing ticket resolution time by 80%
- Led project collaboration between Local and Regional teams across 2+ countries
- Conducted Architecture Design & Review for 10+ projects
- Bridged the gap between Business and Technology — translating business needs into technical solutions
Jan 2023 — Feb 2025
Assistant Manager — Data Infrastructure
Shopee
Jan 2023 — Feb 2025
- Made strategic decisions regarding infrastructure changes impacting 50+ production systems
- Managed Infra Team to maintain Server SLA at 99.9%
- Established a platform solving internal problems through automation and PaaS, reducing ticket resolution time by 80%
- Led project collaboration between Local and Regional teams across 2+ countries
- Conducted Architecture Design & Review for 10+ projects
- Bridged the gap between Business and Technology — translating business needs into technical solutions
Oct 2021 — Feb 2023
Team Lead & DevOps Engineer — Data Infrastructure
Shopee
Oct 2021 — Feb 2023
- Managed team of 4 engineers, created Roadmap & OKR alignment, authored BRD & PRD documents
- Built infrastructure from scratch (server installation, network & DevOps tooling) supporting 50+ production workloads
- Maintained on-premises Kubernetes Cluster running 250+ pods with SLA above 99.9%
- Optimized cloud platform costs, achieving 50% reduction in monthly spend
- Deployed Platform as a Service (PaaS) for internal BI use cases, serving 100+ users
Team Lead & DevOps Engineer — Data Infrastructure
Shopee
Oct 2021 — Feb 2023
- Managed team of 4 engineers, created Roadmap & OKR alignment, authored BRD & PRD documents
- Built infrastructure from scratch (server installation, network & DevOps tooling) supporting 50+ production workloads
- Maintained on-premises Kubernetes Cluster running 250+ pods with SLA above 99.9%
- Optimized cloud platform costs, achieving 50% reduction in monthly spend
- Deployed Platform as a Service (PaaS) for internal BI use cases, serving 100+ users
Senior Associate — DevOps Engineer, Data Platform
Shopee
Apr 2021 — Oct 2021
- Built infrastructure using Virtualization Layer to manage local server resources across 5 nodes
- Migrated monolith architecture to microservices, improving server utilization by 85%
- Implemented GitLab as internal engineering code repository for 20+ developers
- Managed Hadoop Cluster & Presto servers for large-scale data processing
- Built alerting system to monitor servers, reducing undetected incidents by 90%
- Maintained job scheduler on Apache Airflow, orchestrating 100+ DAGs
Apr 2021 — Oct 2021
Senior Associate — DevOps Engineer, Data Platform
Shopee
Apr 2021 — Oct 2021
- Built infrastructure using Virtualization Layer to manage local server resources across 5 nodes
- Migrated monolith architecture to microservices, improving server utilization by 85%
- Implemented GitLab as internal engineering code repository for 20+ developers
- Managed Hadoop Cluster & Presto servers for large-scale data processing
- Built alerting system to monitor servers, reducing undetected incidents by 90%
- Maintained job scheduler on Apache Airflow, orchestrating 100+ DAGs
Sep 2019 — Apr 2021
Senior DevOps Engineer → DevOps Design Engineer (Team Lead)
Blibli.com
Sep 2019 — Apr 2021
- Set vision & managed Jakarta Team of 10+ engineers (sync-ups, 1-on-1s, coaching & mentoring); promoted to Team Lead in Mar 2021
- Managed Kubernetes Cluster on GKE with 1,000+ pods across 250+ services in production and non-production
- Served as principal for the company's Future Program for Infrastructure — defined curriculum for 15+ participants
- Managed GCP infrastructure using Terraform, created Ansible roles, and maintained Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
- Managed logging system with Splunk & Elastic Stack; created GoLang and PowerShell tooling for cloud resource management
- Part of 24/7 on-call team, served as infrastructure review representative from DevOps side
Senior DevOps Engineer → DevOps Design Engineer (Team Lead)
Blibli.com
Sep 2019 — Apr 2021
- Set vision & managed Jakarta Team of 10+ engineers (sync-ups, 1-on-1s, coaching & mentoring); promoted to Team Lead in Mar 2021
- Managed Kubernetes Cluster on GKE with 1,000+ pods across 250+ services in production and non-production
- Served as principal for the company's Future Program for Infrastructure — defined curriculum for 15+ participants
- Managed GCP infrastructure using Terraform, created Ansible roles, and maintained Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
- Managed logging system with Splunk & Elastic Stack; created GoLang and PowerShell tooling for cloud resource management
- Part of 24/7 on-call team, served as infrastructure review representative from DevOps side
Associate DevOps Engineer
Blibli.com
Apr 2018 — Aug 2019
- Served as Infrastructure Lead Release Manager — coordinated deployments across Scrum of Scrum meetings, PMs, Developers & QA teams
- Led migration of 100+ services from Data Center to Cloud (GCP) as part of Infrastructure as Code team
- Mentored participants in the company's Future Program for Infrastructure across multiple batches
- Standardized provisioning across 3+ environments using Terraform
Apr 2018 — Aug 2019
Associate DevOps Engineer
Blibli.com
Apr 2018 — Aug 2019
- Served as Infrastructure Lead Release Manager — coordinated deployments across Scrum of Scrum meetings, PMs, Developers & QA teams
- Led migration of 100+ services from Data Center to Cloud (GCP) as part of Infrastructure as Code team
- Mentored participants in the company's Future Program for Infrastructure across multiple batches
- Standardized provisioning across 3+ environments using Terraform
Mar 2017 — Mar 2018
System Engineer — Intern
Blibli.com
Mar 2017 — Mar 2018
- Set up & managed automation processes with Chef Automation in non-production & production environments
- Maintained internal software systems and provisioned servers for internal web properties
- Assisted developers with production deployments, monitoring & managing infrastructure usage
System Engineer — Intern
Blibli.com
Mar 2017 — Mar 2018
- Set up & managed automation processes with Chef Automation in non-production & production environments
- Maintained internal software systems and provisioned servers for internal web properties
- Assisted developers with production deployments, monitoring & managing infrastructure usage
Education
BINUS University
Bachelor of Computer Science, Information Technology
2014 — 2018 — Major in Networking & Operating System — GPA 3.34
Notable Projects
Move to Cloud (GCP Project)
Blibli.com — Mar 2019 — Sep 2019
Handled Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and migrated microservices to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) from on-premises to Cloud with fully automated CI/CD.
Performance Tuning — Blibli Friends Blog
Blibli.com — May 2018 — Jul 2018
Managed infrastructure for the Blibli Friends blog platform, optimizing web server (Nginx) and support tooling for production performance.