Founding CTO · Hands-on AI Engineering Leader

Faishal Wahiduddin

I build AI systems that run in production: VLM pipelines, intelligent automation, LLM orchestration. 10+ years engineering, 5+ years as CTO, including platforms where a wrong answer moves real money.

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Open to a full-time CTO or Head of Engineering seat, remote, working from UTC+7.

3× Founding / CTO seats
10+ Years shipping software
Fulbright M.S. Computer Science
30+ People led at peak

Selected Work

Platforms I have led

CTO case studies with problem, system design, and measurable outcomes — not just a resume list.

In plain terms: software that reads photos and documents, decides something, and is trusted with the consequences.

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2025

Next.jsSupabaseClaude Vision

AutoKon

Solo-built B2B platform that gates contractor disbursements on VLM-verified photo evidence across thousands of housing units nationwide.

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2023–2024

Web platformEncrypted messagingRBAC

Wool

Enterprise-ready mental health product with encrypted messaging, RBAC, audit logging, and AI analytics that secured a first BUMN partnership.

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2021–2023

AI taskingAWS ServerlessCI/CD

DoCheck

Productivity SaaS where AI tasking, delivery acceleration, FinOps, and technical SEO compounded into measurable user and growth outcomes.

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Selected results

Numbers you can verify

Every metric is tied to a named case study — no sourceless quotes.

5 → 53

Domain Authority in 6 months — SEO and technical content engine (DR 2 → 54)

→ docheck case study

30%

Engineering velocity gain — Agile discipline, CI/CD upgrades, AI-assisted sprint planning

→ docheck case study

20%

Infrastructure cost reduction — AWS serverless migration (Lambda + DynamoDB + RDS)

→ docheck case study

90%

Assessment-time reduction — web-based Enneagram psychotest vs paper flow

→ wool case study

1000s

Housing units served nationwide — across 3 timezones, platform built solo

→ autokon case study

25%

User task-completion lift — AI-powered task generation and prioritization

→ docheck case study

Executive Summary

I am a Founding CTO and hands-on AI engineering leader. I take AI from a working demo to something a business can depend on, which usually means evaluation in the path, cost governance in the architecture, and an interface people will actually use. I have done that as a founding CTO with a team of one, and as a CTO leading twenty-plus engineers across a twelve-hour time difference. The second was harder.

My Works on Media

National coverage of AutoKon's work with REI on digitizing supervision of housing projects.

Core Competencies

The work behind those case studies, grouped by the part of the system it touches.

AI & Orchestration

VLM pipelines, agentic workflows and LLM applications running in production, with an evaluation stage in the path before any output is trusted.

Architecture & Cloud

Cloud-native and serverless systems, plus the cost governance that keeps the bill from growing in step with the traffic.

Engineering & Technologies

Full-stack delivery from schema to interface, including the interfaces that are not screens.

Focus areas

Production VLM pipelines, agentic workflows and LLM systems, built for construction-tech and enterprise platforms.
10+ years engineering and 5+ years leading cross-functional teams, turning AI concepts into systems that carry revenue.
Fulbright scholar with research in high-performance computing, now working on applied AI and system design.

How I work

Based in UTC+7 with global collaboration experience
Leads cross-functional rituals with clear KPIs and roadmaps
Responsive within one business day

My journey

A decade of building

From campus competitions to a founding-CTO seat — year by year, all of it verifiable.

2012

@unpad · 14y ago

Where it started

Informatics at Universitas Padjadjaran. First olympiad win the same era. I had no idea this would become everything.

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I started Informatics at Unpad and almost immediately found the competition circuit — 1st place at a computer science olympiad, then web design competitions. Somewhere between contests and coursework, building things stopped being an assignment and started being the thing I did.
2014

@microsoft · 12y ago

Student Partner, association president, city champion

Microsoft Student Partner, president of the CS student association, and a Smart City app that won Lomba Aplikasi Bandung Juara.

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Microsoft picked me as a Student Partner — I ended up mentoring 100+ student developers. The same year I led the Informatics student association and our Bandung Information Center app won the city's Smart City competition. Leading and shipping at the same time turned out to be my favorite combination.
2016

@industry · 10y ago

Top 5%, then straight to enterprise scale

Graduated top 5% (GPA 3.88). The next builds had names like Telkom and Bank Mandiri on them.

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I graduated in the top 5% of my class and went straight into building for enterprises — a national network monitoring PWA for PT Telkom Indonesia demoed at minister level, and a performance dashboard for Bank Mandiri's Office Control Tower. Both of them ended up in the hands of people I never met.
2019

@fulbright · 7y ago

The scholarship that moved me across the world

Fulbright said yes. I packed my life into two suitcases and started at Ohio University's Intensive English Program.

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The U.S. Department of State's Fulbright scholarship changed the trajectory. I landed in the US for Ohio University's Intensive English Program — academic English, American academic culture, and the strange thrill of being very far from home on purpose.
2021

@twocontinent · 5y ago

M.S. at UCF by day, first CTO seat by night

Finished my M.S. Computer Science at UCF (GPA 3.90) while becoming CTO of DoCheck — leading a 20+ team across a 12-hour time gap.

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I completed my M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida with a 3.90 GPA — and took my first CTO seat at DoCheck at the same time, leading a 20+ engineering team from the other side of the planet. Also served as president of PERMIAS Central Florida, keeping the Indonesian student community close. Sleep was… negotiable.
2023

@wool · 3y ago

The enterprise win that had to be earned

As CTO of Wool, led the delivery that landed our first enterprise customer — a state-owned enterprise partner.

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At Wool I led a 10+ team building a secure mental-health platform — end-to-end encrypted messaging, RBAC, audit logging. The DMHP AI-analytics system we delivered won the company its first enterprise customer, a state-owned enterprise (BUMN) partner. Sensitive domain, zero shortcuts.
2025

@autokon · 1y ago

Founding CTO, team of one

Built AutoKon's entire platform solo — VLM photo verification gating real contractor payments, serving thousands of housing units.

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As founding CTO of AutoKon I built the whole thing solo: a B2B construction-tech platform where field photos become VLM-verified progress data (Claude Opus Vision + Pinecone) that gates contractor payments. Thousands of housing units, three timezones, one engineer. The most demanding and most clarifying build of my life.
2026

@next · this year

The journey continues

A decade in, still obsessed. Now leading AI-era engineering — and looking for the next team to build with.

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Ten-plus years of building, five-plus leading. In 2026 I registered as a tenant of the Universitas Padjadjaran Incubator Program — back at the campus where it all began, building the next venture. The AI era is the most exciting shift I've worked through — LLM evals, VLM pipelines, agentic workflows — and I'm bringing all of it to the next CTO, VP Engineering, or Head of AI seat.

Insights

From the field

The decisions inside those platforms, written up in more detail than a case study has room for.

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August 24, 2026

Before AI Moves Money: The Eval Gate I Built for AutoKon

AutoKon lets a vision model read construction photos and release contractor payments. That only works because a second model grades the first one before anything is disbursed. Here is how that gate is built and why groundedness is the metric that matters.

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August 24, 2026

Twelve Hours Apart: Leading DoCheck's Engineering Team From the Other Side of the Planet

I ran a 20+ engineering team in Indonesia while finishing a master's degree in Florida. The time zone forced changes to how we worked that I would now keep even if everyone sat in one room.

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August 24, 2026

The Best Interface Was One I Didn't Build: WhatsApp on a Construction Site

AutoKon's field workers never log into AutoKon. Evidence arrives over WhatsApp, and approvals happen in guided chat. Choosing the channel people already live in was the highest-leverage product decision I made that year.

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