Navaraj Thapa
Kathmandu, Nepal
For a decade I have worked in infrastructure, six years of it on systems that were not allowed to stop. I built the server environment behind connectIPS at Nepal Clearing House, ran the IT of a payment operator that handles outsourced card operations for Nepali banks, and before either of them, of a hospital treating cancer patients.
An outage in those places is not a ticket. It is a salary that did not arrive, or a machine that did not run. Now I build products of my own instead. This is where I write it down: infrastructure and networks, the mountains, and the questions that stay open after the work is finished.
What I am building
Since December 2024, two products of my own, built and run alone.
cvnepal.com — a CV builder aimed at Nepali job seekers, most of whom are assembling a resume for the first time.
beemaportal.com — an insurance information portal, because insurance in Nepal is sold far more often than it is explained.
Everything from the infrastructure to the interface.
Background
Nearly three years of that decade were at Nepal Clearing House, building the connectIPS server environment — high availability, load balancing, firewall policy, and the ECC and IPS rails alongside it. Eighteen months were at Nepal Electronic Payment System, implementing and maintaining PCI DSS and PCI PIN across the card and ATM switch. A year before either, the IT of Nepal Cancer Hospital, including a full disaster-recovery site.
Earlier still, two years administering several hundred CentOS servers with Ansible and Rundeck for a British company in Hertfordshire, from a desk in Kathmandu, in 2014. Later, eight months as Chief Technology Officer at Nepal Republic Media. I studied at Portsmouth and spent nine years in Britain before coming home.
The mountains
Everest Base Camp, Langtang, Mardi Himal. The twelve-day account of the Everest walk — altitude sickness twice, and a sleeping bag I rented and never used — is in the writing above.
