Ram Kumar Tamang
Backend Engineer — Kathmandu, Nepal

I build systems that warn
before the flood arrives.

Python backend engineer with four-plus years of production experience — who built Nepal's national weather forecast and flood early-warning platforms at NAXA, serving governments and humanitarian teams across three countries.

See my work Download CV
Ram receiving a token of love from the Mayor and HISSAN president, Jhapa
A token of love — with the Mayor & HISSAN president, Jhapa.
Currently
Open to geospatial backend work
Focus
Geospatial · Disaster Risk · APIs
Say hello
[email protected]
Also building with
Nirvix Technology engineering lead — guiding the juniors who built it
High Tech Pioneer Nepal robotics software lead · est. 1984
Safal AI AI training collabs — IME Group, teachers & researchers
01 — About

Engineering that answers to reality.

Ram at Boudhanath, Kathmandu
Boudha, Kathmandu — where I go to walk and think.

Most of my work lives where software meets consequences. At NAXA, I built the backend of Nepal's national weather forecast system for the Department of Hydrology & Meteorology — pipelines that pull ECMWF and NOAA model data, correct it, and turn it into SMS and voice alerts that reach households before rivers rise.

Before that, at KrispCall (YC-backed), I designed VoIP microservices keeping 99.9% uptime for 10,000+ concurrent users, wired up six CRM integrations, and learned that idempotency is a love language. I also lead software for Nepal's first open-source humanoid robot at HTP Lab — speech, vision, and a firm handshake.

Outside the terminal you'll find me running the trails around Kathmandu, judging hackathons in the Terai, or in a café corner with a physical book — usually Taleb or Durant, always arguing with the author.

4+Years in production
3Countries served
10K+Concurrent users supported
1,000+Students trained
02 — Experience

Where the work happened.

Jan 2024 — Sep 2026
Backend Engineer — Python / Geospatial
NAXA Pvt. Ltd. · Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Led backend development of Nepal's national weather forecast system for the Department of Hydrology & Meteorology, integrating ECMWF, NOAA GFS, ICON-EPS, GLOFAS, and GeoGLOWS feeds.
  • Owned and maintained the National Geoportal of Nepal — led its migration from GeoNode 3.x to 4.4.5, including database migration, GeoServer security synchronisation, and production cutover.
  • Built the weather module and real-time alerting for DASTAA, a flood anticipatory-action platform operating across Nepal, Bangladesh, and Malawi.
  • Integrated SMS mass-alerting and IVR voice notifications, enabling household-level early warnings before flood events.
  • Implemented bias-correction and trend-analysis pipelines; built async ingestion with Celery and Redis; optimised PostgreSQL/PostGIS for large geospatial datasets.
FastAPI · Django · PostgreSQL/PostGIS · Celery · Redis · Elasticsearch · Docker · GeoNode
Aug 2022 — Dec 2023
Associate Software Engineer
KrispCall YC-BACKED · Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Designed VoIP microservices in Django ensuring 99.9% uptime for 10,000+ concurrent users, applying Domain-Driven Design and SOLID principles.
  • Integrated six CRM platforms (Pipedrive, Intercom, MS Dynamics) with webhook patterns covering validation, idempotency, and retries — improving client workflows by 25%.
  • Built REST and GraphQL APIs for telephony; implemented event-driven processing with Signals and gRPC; managed the full Stripe transaction lifecycle.
  • Automated CI/CD with GitHub Actions; enforced quality with SonarQube; monitored with Grafana and Datadog. Mentored junior developers.
Python · Django · gRPC · GraphQL · Stripe · AWS EC2 · GitHub Actions
Nov 2021 — Nov 2022
Django Developer
Robotics Association of Nepal · Lalitpur, Nepal
  • Built Django web applications for robotics data tracking and real-time analytics serving 50+ researchers.
  • Processed over a million sensor data points through ML-ready pipelines; developed interactive Plotly dashboards.
Django · PostgreSQL · Pandas · Plotly
03 — Selected Work

Systems in production.

Receiving my bachelor's degree at convocation
Convocation day — BSc ICT, Asia e University.
FEATURED — NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Nepal Weather Forecast & River Monitoring

The national multi-source forecast platform for the Department of Hydrology & Meteorology. Ingests ECMWF, NOAA GFS, ICON-EPS, GLOFAS, and GeoGLOWS models; applies bias correction and trend analysis; pushes real-time alerts through API, SMS, and IVR so warnings arrive before the water does.

FastAPI · Django · Celery · PostgreSQL/PostGIS · Docker
Open the live platform
The team with the InMoov robot at Begnas Lake, Pokhara
Team day — Begnas Lake, Pokhara.
FEATURED — RESEARCH & ROBOTICS

InMoov Humanoid Robot — Software Lead

Nepal's first open-source humanoid robot, built at HTP Lab. I wrote the Python master control system: dual-camera vision with VLM environment understanding, Whisper speech recognition, LLM reasoning with graceful fallbacks, Kokoro TTS voice, and DeepFace emotion recognition — a robot that sees, listens, and answers.

Python · OpenAI Whisper · VLM · Kokoro TTS · DeepFace · Magnetic Encoders
See the engineering notes
03.1

National Geoportal of Nepal

The country's official geospatial data-sharing platform. Led the GeoNode 3.x → 4.4.5 migration and production cutover, resolving security-rule gaps and building repeatable migration tooling.

GeoNode · GeoServer · PostGIS 03.2

DASTAA — Flood Anticipatory Action

Flood early-warning platform operational in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Malawi. Household-level risk profiling with real-time SMS and IVR dispatch integrations.

Django · Redis · Elasticsearch
03.3

OzNepal E-Commerce Backend

Full cart, checkout, and payments backend with Stripe integration — webhooks, transaction lifecycle management, and retry logic for failed payments.

Django · DRF · Stripe
03.4

Biomedical Equipment Management System

Reduced equipment downtime across 100+ hospitals with batch scheduling and real-time notifications for allocation and maintenance.

Django · React · Celery
03.5

Humanizer — AI Writing Assistant

AI-assisted academic writing platform for Nepali students, with Khalti and eSewa payment gateways and full checkout-to-access provisioning.

Django · Khalti · eSewa · AI APIs
04 — Lab Notes

Building a robot that notices things.

At HTP Lab in Kathmandu — guided by Muni Sakya, Nepal's first computer manufacturer — a small team and I are assembling an InMoov upper-body humanoid from 3D-printed parts, servos, and stubbornness.

My side of the project is the mind: a Python master control system that fuses dual-camera vision with a vision-language model, Whisper for speech, an LLM reasoning layer with fallback chains, and Kokoro TTS for voice. DeepFace handles face and emotion recognition, while magnetic encoders and accelerometers give the robot proprioception — knowing where its own joints are.

The unglamorous work matters most: calibrating encoder values by hand, computing tyre revolution ratios for wheel odometry, tuning until the handshake feels like one.

ESP32Jetson NanoComputer VisionSpeech AIServo Control3D Printed
Magnetic encoder calibration notes
Lab note — calculating radius values from the magnetic encoder readings.
Tyre revolution calculation
Lab note — working out wheel revolution counts for odometry.
“

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Antifragile

Underlined twice in my copy. I keep coming back to this one.

05 — Library

The books that shape how I build.

A physical book goes everywhere I do — café corners, bus rides, lunch breaks. I read slowly, argue with authors, and turn the best ideas into something usable. Here's the current shelf — thirty-seven volumes and counting.

Reading now
Finished · 31
The Nepal shelf  ·  नेपाली ओट

Home ground — hills, saints, and stories from right here.

Up next
Interlude — three voices

The mirror, the boulder, the underground.

Wilde, Camus, Dostoevsky — the three I end up arguing with at 2 a.m. Look into the mirror, watch the boulder, carry a candle downstairs.

I. The mirrorOscar Wilde

We are all beautiful — until the mirror starts telling the truth.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

hover · or tap · to see what it hides
The first line is mine, after Wilde. The second is Lord Henry's, from The Picture of Dorian Gray — the portrait that kept the truth so the face didn't have to. Also underlined: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
II. The boulderAlbert Camus
summit
pushed 0 times since you arrived · still happy
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Albert Camus — The Myth of Sisyphus
Reading it now. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.” Camus finds him on the walk back down — so do I, usually after a deploy.
III. The undergroundFyodor Dostoevsky
I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.
Notes from Underground
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
Notes from Underground
Above all, don't lie to yourself.
The Brothers Karamazov
It's dark down here — move the candle. Wilde shows you the mirror; Dostoevsky makes you admit what's in it.
06 — Field Journal

Notes from the road.

Jhapa — 2026

Judging, teaching, and a token of love

Spent a week in Jhapa leading an AI/ML bootcamp for 100+ school and college students, then judged their final presentations alongside the panel. Met the HISSAN Nepal president and college directors, ran the Whitehouse Run Fest, and came home with a token of love from the Mayor — and a full journal.

Kathmandu team at WCBT hackathon, Jhapa
The Kathmandu crew at the WCBT hackathon, Jhapa.
Judging student presentations
Judging final presentations — hardest good work there is.
The judge panel
The judge panel, mid-deliberation.
Marking score diaries during presentations
Marking the diaries — scores, notes, second coffees.
Jhapa morning, car window view.
Receiving token of love from the Mayor and HISSAN president
Receiving a token of love from the Mayor & HISSAN president.
Book café in Jhapa
Found a book café, obviously stayed hours.
Ready for the run fest
Race morning — ready for the Run Fest.
Whitehouse Run Fest DJ stage, Jhapa
Whitehouse Run Fest — DJ, dust, and finish lines.
Ilam — 2026 · also on Instagram ↗

Hills, tea, and quiet roads

A slower trip east with the team: Kanyam's tea gardens, fog that arrives without asking, a horseman on the trail, and long sits on hills doing absolutely nothing important.

Me at Kanyam, Ilam
Me at Kanyam.
Standing with the clouds at Kanyam
Standing with the clouds at Kanyam.
Horseman and horse, Ilam
Horseman and his horse, Ilam.
Community view, Ilam
The community view, Ilam.
Kanyam nature frames
Kanyam nature frames.
Team sitting on the hill
The team, sitting on the hill.
Team visiting Ilam
Team visiting Ilam.
Formal judging session, Jhapa
Back to formal — judging session, Jhapa.
Café corner, Jhapa
Café corner, Jhapa.
Kuri Village, Kalinchowk — 2023 · as covered by Business 360° ↗

The highest-altitude hackathon in Nepal

Code Brisk Hackathon 2023 — a nonstop 24 hours at Kuri Village, 3,447 m above sea level, where 13 colleges built prototypes for Kalinchowk’s tourism and hospitality sector. The first hackathon ever held at that altitude, picked up by Routine of Nepal Banda and Business 360° alike.

Winning moment at Code Brisk Hackathon 2023, Kuri Village, Kalinchowk
The winning moment — Virinchi College’s Team Everest takes it with ‘Tidy Town’. via Business 360°
Teams presenting prototypes at Code Brisk Hackathon 2023, Kuri Village
Top three teams demoing at Kalinchowk. via Business 360°
Code Brisk Hackathon 2023 as shared by Routine of Nepal Banda
Made the news — via Routine of Nepal Banda
From the sketchbook

When I'm not shipping, I'm shading.

Pencil lines drawn between deploys, at a resort railing, in the office art hour. The whole wall — plus Chitlang, Jhapa, Ilam, the classroom and the rest — hangs in the gallery, eleven rooms deep.

Walk through the gallery →
Pencil drawing of a resort held up in front of the real view Drew the resort, then held it up to the real thing. Pencil drawing of a butterfly landing on a hand A butterfly lands on a hand. Pencil sketch of a crooked cottage A messy little house, pocket sketchbook.
07 — Now

What I'm up to, lately.

Reading
The Myth of SisyphusCamus, fresh off Antifragile — pushing the boulder, trying to enjoy it. Dorian Gray on the nightstand.
Building
InMoov robotSoftware lead at HTP Lab — teaching it to see, listen, and answer.
Running
Morning kilometres7–10km before the phone gets a chance. Next run fest loading.
08 — Principles

Things I believe, provisionally.

१

The river doesn't read the documentation.

Build for the monsoon, not the demo. Reality is the only test suite that never gets skipped.

२

A warning that arrives late is just a report.

In early-warning work, latency is an ethical question. Every second in the pipeline belongs to someone downstream.

३

Stress is information.

What breaks a system tells you what it was pretending to be. Let the failures teach, then design so they can't repeat.

४

Read with a pencil.

Every book is an argument. I keep my side of it in the margins.

५

Teach what you just learned.

A thousand students later, I'm sure of this: explaining something is the fastest way to find where you don't understand it yet.

६

Walk in circles, think in straight lines.

The kora around Boudha settles more of my design decisions than any whiteboard does.

Boudha, drawn one kora at a time — keep scrolling.

// subject to revision — like all good software.

Contact

Good systems start with
a good conversation.

Open to backend roles, geospatial collaborations, or an interesting problem worth solving. I reply fast to thoughtful messages.

[email protected]
Today's margin note — from the shelf Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Antifragile