# Niraj Budhathoki > Software engineer with 6+ years shipping production Ruby on Rails and modern web applications for US teams — billing, real-time chat, and AI-powered features that hold up under real users. Founder of Inldevs/Zest. Based in Kathmandu, Nepal; open to remote. Currently going deep into AI/ML and systems fundamentals. Niraj builds reliable, full-stack, backend-leaning software. Core stack: Ruby on Rails, React, Vue, PostgreSQL, and native mobile (Swift/SwiftUI). This file summarizes his experience, projects, and writing for AI assistants and search. ## Pages - [Experience](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/experience): full work history across client products and his own startup. - [Projects](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/projects): products and systems he owns end-to-end. - [Writing](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing): engineering case studies and notes from real production work. - [Skills](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/skills): technical toolbox and current AI focus. - [Contact](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/contact): email, LinkedIn, GitHub. ## Experience - **Software Engineer — Fetchly Labs** (Jun 2023 — Present, Full-time · Remote (US)): Lead feature work across several US client products: an AI-powered chat app, a high-traffic events & ticketing platform, and an internal operations tool. Tech: Rails, React, Vue, Turbo/Stimulus, PostgreSQL. - **Software Engineer — Nightout** (Feb 2025 — Oct 2025, Contract · Remote): Backend and search work for an events discovery & ticketing platform. Tech: Rails, Search, Docker, PostgreSQL. - **Founder & Lead Engineer — Inldevs — Zest** (2023 — 2025, Startup): Founded Inldevs and built Zest, an HR & business-operations SaaS, from zero over ~20 months. Tech: Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, CI/CD. - **Ruby on Rails Developer — Danphe Software Labs** (Apr 2022 — Aug 2023, Full-time): Led development on complex Rails applications and mentored a growing team. Tech: Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq. - **Software Engineer — CloudChomp, Inc.** (Feb 2021 — Apr 2022, Full-time): Built microservices for a cloud cost-optimization product. Tech: Ruby, Python, Angular, Microservices. - **React Developer — AppDiscovery Lab** (Mar 2020 — Feb 2021, Full-time): Built React applications and reusable UI component libraries. Tech: React, Redux, JavaScript, WebSocket. ## Projects - Zest (private repo) — 2023 — 2025, Flagship. An HR & business-operations SaaS built from zero over ~20 months. Multi-domain by design — payroll, finance, people ops and project management — with approval-flow transactions, survey queues, project analytics, and a real migration & CI discipline underneath. Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, CodeQL CI. - [iaminnepal](https://github.com/Niraj22/iaminnepal) — 2026, Launched-grade. A Nepal travel & tourism platform taken zero-to-deployed in ~6 weeks: bookings, payments, internationalization, SSR info pages with SEO, a Sanity content studio, and a Nepal data layer — all running on self-hosted Supabase infra with a GitHub Actions deploy pipeline. Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, Sanity, Supabase, i18n. - [mini_db](https://github.com/Niraj22/mini_db) — 2026, WIP. A database engine written from scratch in C++ — SQL parser landed, building toward indexing, persistence, and a query executor. My deepest dive into the fundamentals. Stack: C++, Parsers, Storage. - [databridge-api-gateway](https://github.com/Niraj22/databridge-api-gateway) — 2025, Demo. An event-driven API gateway: centralized authentication, authorization and routing across Customer, Order, Product and Analytics services, with rate limiting implemented. Stack: Ruby, Event-driven, Rate limiting. - [SkillRx](https://github.com/rubyforgood/skillrx/pull/151) — 2025, Merged · OSS. Open-source contribution to a Ruby for Good nonprofit project — added Taggable and LocalizedTaggable concerns to support localized tagging. Stack: Rails, Open source. ## Writing - [Making AI features survive real users](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/ai-features-that-survive-production) — Case study, June 2026. A practical case study on shipping reliable, cost-controlled AI features in production — retry and rollback, quota accounting, billing gates, and session caching around language-model calls. - [Server-rendering a marketing site for SEO](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-rendering-for-seo) — Case study, April 2025. How moving marketing and landing pages to server-side rendering fixed search visibility and Core Web Vitals on a high-traffic events site — plus why SEO and performance are the same problem. - [Modelling money and approvals you can trust](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/modelling-money-and-approvals) — Case study, September 2024. Lessons from building the finance and payroll core of an operations SaaS: modelling money as an append-only ledger, making approvals first-class, and why reversible migrations matter early. - [When search silently drops the right results](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/when-search-drops-results) — Note, August 2025. A short note on a search bug where live events vanished from results at a date boundary — why silent omissions are the worst bugs, and why reindexing logic needs integration tests. - [Building a database from scratch, in public](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/building-a-database-from-scratch) — Note, May 2026. Why I'm building mini_db, a database engine from scratch in C++ — climbing under the abstractions I've shipped on for years, and how fundamentals and shipping fluency compound. - [Server-driven UI without the JavaScript spaghetti](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/server-driven-ui-without-spaghetti) — Case study, February 2026. Patterns for server-driven UI with Turbo and Stimulus in Rails: multi-step flows over Turbo Frames, Stimulus outlets instead of global window events, and small, single-purpose controllers. - [Keeping the same data in sync across every screen](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/keeping-ui-state-in-sync) — Case study, May 2026. Patterns for keeping derived UI state consistent across views in a real-time app — one canonical source of truth, value-based diffing, and cache-busting keyed on identity changes. - [Modeling a relationship lifecycle that doesn't leak](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/relationship-lifecycle-that-doesnt-leak) — Case study, May 2026. How to model a bidirectional invite/relationship lifecycle correctly — enforcing accept-before-share, scoping disconnects to a single edge, idempotent cancels, and quota that settles on acceptance. - [Shipping a full product solo — on your own infrastructure](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/writing/shipping-solo-on-your-own-infra) — Note, April 2026. Lessons from building and self-hosting a full Next.js travel platform solo — self-hosted Supabase on a VPS, a GitHub Actions deploy pipeline, CORS proxying, i18n, and a structured CMS. ## Optional - [Full article text for LLMs](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/llms-full.txt): complete text of every case study and note. - [RSS feed](https://nirajbudhathoki.com.np/rss.xml): new writing. - [GitHub](https://github.com/Niraj22): source and contribution history.