How Tokopedia uses GitHub

Tokopedia has grown from a digital marketplace into a technology company supporting e-commerce across Indonesia, serving over 7.6 million merchants—86.5 percent of whom are first-time entrepreneurs. As the platform scaled, so did the engineering team, growing from 300 to over 1,000 developers across multiple locations. This growth required a fundamental shift in how the company built and deployed software.

Company Overview

Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Industry: e-Commerce
Number of Developers: 1,000+

The Challenge: Scaling from Monolith to Microservices

With their previous on-premises solution, all code management and deployment had to go through a single team. This approach worked for a few hundred developers but became a bottleneck at scale. "Tokopedia was growing so big that we needed to move from a monolith into a microservices model," explained Security Engineer Lead Purnaresa Yuliartanto. "With our previous vendor, our code was being managed on-premises in one place by one team, so everything had to go through them—including deployment."

The team needed a way to deploy and release quickly without maintaining their own servers. A microservices model would let individual engineers manage their own code and deploy independently, but required a more flexible cloud platform than their current solution.

Moving to GitHub Enterprise Cloud

"We were looking for a simpler way," said Yuliartanto. "We wanted to focus on writing code and getting features out, not managing the server. GitHub is easy to maintain and access from anywhere, which is critical for microservices—and what convinced us to switch."

The shift to GitHub Enterprise Cloud enabled the move to microservices and more efficient workflows. Administrative overhead dropped dramatically—fewer administrators now manage the platform for 1,000+ engineers than when a team of four managed servers for only 300. Everyone shares the platform, from DevOps teams and security engineering to leadership.

With GitHub's built-in code reviews, teams can work on code separately and together simultaneously. "In one day, we make 200 to 300 pushes to production. All this is possible because of collaboration," said Rajesh Gopala Krishnan, AVP of Engineering Productivity. "GitHub gives us stability and helps us have better velocity."

Automation and Workflow Standardization

Developers can combine Jenkins, AWS, and Azure while using GitHub as a unified foundation. The team created automated workflow templates with GitHub Actions to bring uniformity to their pipeline. "When we moved from our previous vendor to GitHub, GitHub was simple to use and everyone got access to the system," Krishnan said. "So we started creating automated workflow templates with GitHub Actions to help bring uniformity to our pipeline."

Today, Tokopedia has achieved 80 percent workflow automation with GitHub, compared to only 20 percent with their previous solution. GitHub Actions is used for auto-recovery, unit testing, and more. As teams explore additional features like GitHub Packages for standardized code reviews, they continue tweaking workflows for complex tasks with confidence that all development happens in a shared place.

Security and Open Source

Tokopedia's dedicated security team leads the effort to integrate open source components while maintaining compliance with government regulations. The security team conducts regular audits and penetration testing throughout the year. "We have a lot of policies and processes to follow," Yuliartanto said, "and when we learn new regulations, we share the guidelines with our teams and help incorporate them. With GitHub, we're able to do that easily."

GitHub security advisories help the team identify vulnerable dependencies. "Most of the insight we get is from GitHub security advisories, and from there we can tell if there's a dependency in our system that's not secure," Krishnan explained.

Open source also accelerates development. "Open source always helps shrink the time to market. With open source, I don't need to start from scratch. I can access the basics and use them how I want to," Krishnan said. By open sourcing some of their own research and innovation, Tokopedia helps first-time entrepreneurs access tools without expensive commercial alternatives—aligning with their mission to "democratize commerce through technology."

Impact on Hiring and Onboarding

New developers recognize Tokopedia as cutting-edge for their open source policies and want to join the organization. "Coming out of college, developers see how active we are in open source," Krishnan said, "and they think, 'Okay, this is the kind of technology the company uses, which I already use. Let me be part of this organization.'"

GitHub's popularity also accelerates onboarding. "Everyone who joins us, whether junior or senior, is already familiar with GitHub. For onboarding engineers, GitHub makes things a lot faster and easier," Yuliartanto noted.

Continuous Deployment at Scale

The company now deploys 24/7 throughout the year without waiting for specific deployment windows. "We don't have to do deployment on a particular day or at a particular time," Krishnan said. "Now we do it 24/7, all throughout the year." Yuliartanto confirmed: "GitHub is providing the essential tools to help us be more productive and also more stable. This wouldn't have been possible without it."