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PRASHANT THAPA
Python Backend Engineer
Sydney NSW [email protected] +61 404 647 723 linkedin.com/in/thapaprashant69 github.com/thapaprashant69 prashanthapa.com.np
Professional Summary

Python Backend Engineer with 6+ years of experience building scalable, data-driven systems and cloud-native applications. Specialized in Python (FastAPI, Django) with strong expertise in REST API development, microservices and data pipeline engineering. Proficient with AWS services, PostgreSQL and distributed architectures to deliver high-performance, secure platforms. Adept at collaborating with quant, data and product teams to develop intelligent trading, analytics and automation solutions that drive measurable business impact.

Experience
Software Engineer Current
Jul 2025 – Present
IT Together | Sydney, Australia
  • Designed, developed and maintained backend services for multiple web applications serving educational institutions and consulting clients.
  • Built a scalable Student Management System handling student records, authentication, role-based access and reporting.
  • Worked across the full stack, seamlessly switching between backend and frontend integration to meet project timelines.
  • Managed concurrent projects in fast-paced environments, demonstrating strong prioritisation and problem-solving skills.
  • Ensured code quality, performance optimisation and maintainability while adapting solutions to varying business needs.
Software Engineer Freelance
Oct 2025 – Dec 2025
Upwork - DNSShield | Remote
  • Re-architected a DNS security backend, reducing latency from ~40s to ~500ms targeting sub-50ms.
  • Migrated core services from SQLite to PostgreSQL with connection pooling, optimised query patterns and async logging to eliminate blocking I/O.
  • Implemented Python in-memory caching (dictionary-based) for ultra-fast lookups, outperforming Redis for the project's retrieval requirements.
  • Developed backend APIs and admin views for monitoring DNS activity, logs and system performance.
Software Engineer
Sep 2023 – Jun 2025
Verisk | Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Built and optimised RESTful APIs using AWS API Gateway + Lambda + ALB for high-performance data services.
  • Architected compute workflows with ECS, EC2 and containerised microservices (ECR).
  • Reduced pipeline cost by 90% by migrating RDS-heavy workloads to AWS Athena.
  • Developed Power BI dashboards to track data freshness, usage and output quality.
  • Integrated AI/ML-based data extraction pipelines for text and image automation.
  • Led secure cloud deployments using AWS Secrets Manager, RDS and CI/CD.
Backend Developer - Tech Lead Freelance
Apr 2023 – Aug 2024
Global Stock Market Startup (Mavefund) | Remote
  • Designed and optimised FastAPI microservices serving 100K+ monthly users with <200ms latency.
  • Built data ingestion and transformation pipelines aggregating multi-source global financial data (stocks, ETFs, market indicators).
  • Developed asynchronous background workers for high-frequency data synchronisation and analytics computation.
  • Ensured data consistency, API reliability and security compliance across distributed systems.
Full Stack Developer - Tech Lead Freelance
May 2023 – Sep 2023
US Healthcare Startup (CompuFlair) | Remote
  • Built a full stack medical data processing platform from the ground up for a US-based professor's project, designed to make open-source AI models accessible to non-technical users examining and validating medical reports.
  • Chose Django with server-rendered templates, custom HTML, CSS, and JS over a separate frontend framework to move faster in the project's early, fast-moving phase.
  • Architected the system to accommodate open-source models of varying sizes and architectures, deploying and running them on DigitalOcean with API-based configuration management to scale compute resources per model.
  • Built the deployment pipeline to take a chosen open-source model, run it against customer medical reports, and return structured insights and output, resilient and expandable as new models and larger compute needs were added.
Software Engineer (Founding Engineer)
Jul 2022 – Sep 2023
Navya Advisors Limited | Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Designed and built a secure middleware system for NIC Asia Capital, enhancing their legacy user enrollment process for a closed-end mutual fund managing approximately AUD 15 million. Owned the engagement end to end, from problem discovery through stakeholder communication to full integration, delivered within one month.
  • Joined as the first engineer and led end-to-end development of a financial intelligence platform delivering AI-driven investment insights, architecting Django REST APIs powering mobile and web applications with real-time analytics and market predictions.
  • Led a team of 8 engineers across 4 concurrent projects spanning Python, React, Laravel, and Flutter.
  • Extracted unstructured historical stock data from multiple sources, using OpenCV and Tesseract OCR to pull data out of scanned images and files, feeding the structured dataset used by our data scientist founder to build and train the platform's investment prediction models.
  • Architected and deployed the resulting AI models securely to the cloud, running production infrastructure on Linux with Nginx, Gunicorn, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Implemented Redis caching and query optimisation, reducing API latency by 40%.
  • Optimised a Flutter and Laravel mobile application for a distributor client managing employee order handling across multiple retailers, reducing their core pain point's processing time from around 50 seconds to under 5 seconds within one week of handover.
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer
Apr 2020 – Aug 2022
Software Factory Pvt. Ltd | Biratnagar, Nepal
  • Designed and launched Sathi Foods, a food delivery platform with 1,000+ monthly active users.
  • Oversaw end-to-end architecture, backend engineering and team management.
  • Implemented DevOps pipelines and API-first architecture from scratch.
  • Collaborated with international teams to build scalable, cloud-deployed solutions.
Data Specialist
Mar 2020 – Jul 2022
Cloudfactory | Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Processed and structured real-time satellite & map data for U.S. clients.
  • Developed and maintained annotation workflows, quality metrics and validation pipelines.
  • Ensured data integrity and scalability for large visual data pipelines in Python.
Skills
Languages & Frameworks Python (FastAPI, Django), JavaScript (React, Node.js)
Databases PostgreSQL, Redis, SQL/NoSQL, AWS Athena
Cloud & DevOps AWS (Lambda, ECS, EC2, API Gateway, RDS, SQS, Secrets Manager), Docker, CI/CD, Git
Tools & Platforms Linux (Ubuntu), Nginx, Gunicorn, Power BI, GitHub Actions
Soft Skills Problem-solving, Team Leadership, Agile Development, Cross-functional Collaboration
Education
Bachelor of Software Engineering
Nepal College of Information Technology (NCIT)
2015 – 2019
Australian Work Eligibility
References

Available on request