Looking For a Dynamic Engineering Team? Ruangguru Might be For You
Pahlevi hits his 14th day at Ruangguru, yet he’s already in charge of an upcoming product launch, scheduled for two months later. For him, time is of the essence.
“We were going to launch a new product and we needed to validate it as soon as possible,” Pahlevi, better known as Levi, currently Ruangguru’s senior engineering manager in the Core Engineering team, said.
That product is called Skill Academy, an online skills-training platform, which eventually found its way to television, just like other Ruangguru products. Indeed, that day finally came. A special-made TV program about Skill Academy aired across three national TV stations simultaneously. For Levi and the rest of the Skill Academy team, that was the first time they faced greater-than-usual traffic on the website.
Levi remembers that day well. Time was not on Levi’s side then, and they had legitimate constraints regarding preparation as well. Precautionary steps were taken, but they were minimal. Enthusiasm peaked during Skill Academy’s TV debut, and the website attracted numerous visitors. Fortunately, visitors continued their seamless browsing on the site and the platform remained under control, and that became one of Levi’s proudest achievements since he joined Ruangguru.
“If we receive high traffic, the supporting backend and infrastructure system must be scaled according to the traffic needs quickly. That way we’ll achieve 0 downtime,” Levi explained. “This is a challenge unique to Ruangguru, I think, where we often advertise and air our programs simultaneously across TV channels.”
Levi began his engineering career upon graduating college. He graduated from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, majoring in computer science. After graduating in 2011, Levi worked at IBM Singapore, where he learned a lot about ATM system software and hardware. Then he continued his Masters at the National University of Singapore in Infocomm Security. After having learned as much knowledge as he could at that stage, Levi returned to Indonesia.
In Indonesia, Levi started out in one of the leading e-commerce companies. He was their Chief Technology Officer. Four years in and Levi wanted a fresh experience. At the time, Levi was faced with four job offers; one from Ruangguru and three from other unicorn companies.
Levi chose Ruangguru. There were many things Levi considered in the process, one of which was the difficulty of the interview. Levi was faced with 2–3 hours of difficult questioning during his Ruangguru interview. There, he concluded that his prospective colleagues were going to be quite competent. Levi also saw a great learning opportunity in Ruangguru.
“I decided to join Ruangguru because I knew I wasn’t going to be given just one project, but I would be able to be involved in many different projects. Ruangguru’s market was also very broad and it’s expanding overseas. The learning is ok, the team is ok, and the business is ok. Finally, I decided to join Ruangguru,” Levi explained.
Currently, Levi is responsible for developing reusable features in many Ruangguru products. For example, user service, workflow engine, marketing channels, content administration, a question bank, etc.
Levi felt that he could learn a lot from his colleagues in Ruangguru. Ruangguru’s engineering team hosts regular gatherings called the Public Design Challenge (PDC). Here, all teams can share what projects they are working on. Engineers typically explain the problems they face and talk about the solutions they found or look for solutions from each other
“In PDC we can discuss with each other, even challenge each other, like, ‘Why is the design the way it is?’ What’s interesting is that everyone gets feedback. Not just the project owner, but also the audience, and that is where they can learn… and because we conducted PDC for any project, you get to learn from different projects. Not just one,” Levi shared.
For Levi, what’s fundamentally interesting in Ruangguru’s tech team is its highly selective and difficult hiring process. This is what, for Levi, explains the Ruangguru tech team’s productivity and diverse expertise across engineering fields. (Not to mention their high competence.)
“Here, if you want to learn, just ask. You don’t need to search so far outside. All you have to do is find the person, sit together and start talking. If you want to learn about architecture backend, frontend, data science, data engineering, you can find all these people in Ruangguru. There is knowledge everywhere. All you need to do is get together. That is what is very interesting in Ruangguru,” Levi concluded.
Levi suggests you take a look at opportunities with Ruangguru’s tech team by clicking this link, especially if you’re eager for learning opportunities unlike any other.
This article was translated by Tasha Wibawa.
