Milan Thapa

Updated 15 August 2026

Namaste 🙏🏼, hi, hola

I’m a site reliability engineer from Nepal, these days somewhere around the SF Bay Area. For a decade and change I’ve designed virtual infrastructure, brought it up from text files, petted it like cattle and watched it scale up and down — so the people building businesses on top of it frown a little less.

Right now I’m an indie developer building in the open: vibecare, which nudges you to blink, move, rest and recharge right on time; kazi, lazydocker and basecamp/once folded into one TUI; and a steady drip of other interesting developer tools, CLIs and SRE agents.

From 2022 to 2024 I was DevSecOps/SRE at Zenledger, where I took API latency from roughly 600ms to under 200ms, cut $10k+/month off the cloud bill, and drove the SOC2 and ISO27001 work.

Before that I co-founded CloudRickshaw, a DevOps-as-a-service shop. We designed and secured banking platforms, provisioned everything as code from day one, mentored engineers and ran Kubernetes training.

I started out at Cloudfactory in 2013 — Ruby on AWS, CI/CD pipelines, clustering for availability, and preaching the 12-factor gospel. CKA and CKAD picked up along the way, on top of a Computer Engineering degree from Kathmandu University.

I contribute to open source and help organize meetups. Away from the keyboard: strumming 🎸, futsal ⚽️, and time with family.

The long version is in my CV, and I write things down in posts. You’ll also find me on X and GitHub.

Greetings #greetings

Hi there 🙋🏼‍♂️ Sneaking at my bio ?? -> Nice to meet you 🙇🏼

tldr;

  I l🫶ve️ to design virtual infrastructures
    🤹🏻 bring them up with text/yaml files
    🐕‍🦺 pet them as cattles
    🕵🏻‍♂️ watch them scale up and down
  so as to minimize the sad face of people
  ...building business around them.

things I love to do

ship & scale	application runtimes on AWS, GCP, Linode using `IAC and charts`
instrument	services(slow queries) & improve telemetry(traces, metrics, logs & graphs)
ci/cd	build pipelines(github, argocd, gitlab)
secure	systems with rules & policies, lead compliance(SOC2, ISO27k1)
reliability	design for HA(clustering, failover), perform zero-downtime upgrades
oncall	debug & rescue production, lead blameless post-mortems
optimize	cost via capacity planning, reservations & waste reduction
make	cli tools (`bash/go/py`), apis (`go,ruby`), rag(`llamaindex`)
mentor	teams on architecture patterns(12-factor), security & DevOps culture
organize	meetups DevOps-Kathmandu & contribute to open source projects

And if you prefer YAML/JSON

intro.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: AboutMe
spec:
 labels:
   name: Milan Thapa
   site: https://thapakazi.com

 social:
   github: thapakazi
   twitter: thapakazi_

 xp:
   duration  : 87600h++ # >10+yrs
   languages : ["py","go", "rb"]
   cloud     : ["aws","gcp"]
   iac       : ["opentofu"]
   containers: ["k8s","ecs"]

 expertise:
   - site reliability engineering

 exploring:
   - agentic workflows
   - platform engineering

 hobbies:
   - strumming 🎸
   - futsal ⚽️
   - misc 🥾🏸🚴

intro.json

{
"apiVersion": "v1",
"kind": "AboutMe",
"spec": {
  "expertise": [
    "site reliability engineering"
  ],
  "exploring": [
    "agentic workflows",
    "platform engineering"
  ],
  "hobbies": [
    "strumming 🎸",
    "futsal ⚽️",
    "misc 🥾🏸🚴"
  ],
  "labels": {
    "name": "Milan Thapa",
    "site": "https://thapakazi.com"
  },
  "social": {
    "github": "thapakazi",
    "twitter": "thapakazi_"
  },
  "xp": {
    "cloud": [
      "aws",
      "gcp"
    ],
    "containers": [
      "k8s",
      "ecs"
    ],
    "duration": "87600h++",
    "iac": [
      "opentofu"
    ],
    "languages": [
      "py",
      "go",
      "rb"
    ]
  }
}
}

Projects #projects

kazi

Lazydocker, basecamp/once in one tui/cli

container

vibecare

VibeCare nudges you to blink, move, rest, and recharge—right on time

utils

learning-child

Parent-curated YouTube for kids: a Chrome extension that swaps algorithmic recommendations for brain-development videos

utils

mcli

Never miss any interesting meetups; yes, right from your terminal

meetup, utils

easyssh-go

ssh config generator, i.e, pulls aws tags > ~/.ssh/config

ssh

Slides

🐗 central repo for all the slideszzzz

docs

Kutto Kodalo

shell utils and functions| मेरो कुट्टो कोदालोहरु, हल्का खिया लागेको छ, होसियार है ‼️

shell

happiness_score

a happiness logger utility

random

Skills and Expertise #skills-and-expertise

	proficiency	knows
containers	kubernetes 🩶(CKA/CKAD)	ecs, docker-compose
iac	terraform	pulumi, packer, cloudFormation
automation	ansible, capistrano
lib/frameworks	react, rails, buffalo	sinatra
languages	golang💚, sh , ruby	c, js, python, c
aws	EKS, EC2, S3, IAM, RDS,...	DynamoDB, ElastiCache
gcp	k8s, codebuild,dbs,compute	Storage/Buckets
database	postgresql, mongo	redis, mysql, percona tools
monitoring	prometheus, sensu, datadog	newrelic, +nagios+
ci/cd	github/gitlab, jenkins	travis, circleci
blockchain	truffle	ethereum:SmartContracts
typeset	org-mode, md	latex
editor	emacs(😈-mode)	vim, nano
system	archlinux	debians, +windows/mac+
speech	नेपाली, English	Hindi

Work Experience #work-experience

DevSecOps/SRE @ Zenledger

2022 – 2024

Stack: RoR, Go, AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, Honeybadger, ScoutAPM, Datadog, Github
Interesting Chores:
- performance improvement for api servers from 500-600ms to less than 200ms
- capacity planning and revision to save more than 10k$/month
- developed a custom proxy using Tinyproxy to scale outgoing connections and bypass third-party geo-restrictions and rate limits.
- build cli tool to assist devs to get to rails console, fetch logs, scale up/down their pods
- custom workflow for static wordpress builds of website
- autoscaling of reader database to handle spikes
- autoscaling of servers based on custom metrics(backlog on background jobs)
Tasks included:
- bootstrapping all of the necessary infrastructures (introduce iac/terraform after rejoining)
  - preview environments on pull_request with argocd
- chores:
  - help optimizing database operations
    - report system health issues due to db spikes, help devs deal with the query
    - assist devs to move read queries to reader, add autoscaling on db reader
  - monitor system health and security threats
  - streamlined GitHub Actions (parallel tests) and optimized self-hosted runners configurations.
  - guiding developers to build a robust, secure, and scalable platform.
  - documentation:
    - runbooks to handle incidents
    - all the missing infra components and deployments
- worked to get compliance: SOC2 & ISO27001 certifications

Founder && Senior DevOps Engineer @ CloudRickshaw

2018 – 2022

Started a DevOps as Service offering with a team to help companies and startups streamline DevOps culture.
Worked with a global team to design, build and deploy banking applications, adhering to strict security and compliance requirements.
Provisioned infrastructures and environments with code from day one. Monitored security and operational requirements.
Mentored fresh minds to explore and learn DevOps principles. Provided training on Kubernetes.

clients & engagements

DevOps Contractor @ Plantura

Tech: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, GithubAction, Sentry, Grafana, Helm, Python
Assisted migration of the Odoo/ERP from odoo.sh to a self-hosted setup at AWS.
Helped the team improve the overall observability and performance of the system with graphs and logs.
Drafted testing/preview environments by duck-taping docker via github actions

DevOps Contractor @ Innovatetech

2020 – 2022

Introduced and mentored teammates for IAC with Terraform.
Streamlined the deployments to be simple and continuous.
Helped devs improve the health and performance of the system with the instrumentation of metrics, traces, and logs using Prometheus, Grafana, Elk, and APM.
Involved in non-functional chores like hiring and mentoring DevOps members, advocating documentation and diagrams, and 12factor app design principles.
Oversaw capacity planning for better resource utilization.
Defined a granular DevOps Roadmap and delegated ownership among teammates.
Performed general operational chores, specifically migrations, upgrades, rescue production, sharing postmortems, and improving reliability and security.

IRcon

Tech: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, BitBucket, Grafana, Prometheus, Helm, Java, Python
Worked with a global team to design, build and deploy banking applications, adhering to strict security and compliance requirements.
Provisioned infrastructures and environments with code from day one.
Monitored security and operational requirements.

Upwork

Kodekloud | https://kodekloud.com/
- Had awesome experience with Mumshad creating questions on labs for ansible
Misc
- Migrating Ruby app to AWS with improvements on security
- Added pipeline for continuous deployment

Payable

2018 – 2019

Introduced and mentored teammates for IAC with Terraform.
- Tech: AWS, Golang, Solidity, React Native, Mobile, Ethereum, Blockchain, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Go, APIs
- Built a payment utility application bridging the crypto-legacy banking payment options.
- Developed the back end (API & custom CLI client), handled the deployments, and managed the team effort for continuous delivery and improvements.
- The solution was built on top of the Ethereum and Dwolla APIs.

DevOps Engineer @ Cloudfactory

2013 – 2018

Tech: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Grafana, Prometheus, Ansible, Ruby on Rails (RoR)
Deployed a Ruby runtime on AWS.
Worked on capacity planning, and build solutions for cost reduction.
Setup a CI/CD pipeline for a faster, reliable delivery.
Monitored server/business metrics (over graphs, slack alerts).
Deployed services with increase availability via clustering, replication (HA).
Evangelized on better engineering principles/practices (12-factor app) across the team.
Executed smooth downtime/service migrations, VMS, patching, and building immutable infrastructures.
Developed bots to automate mundane tasks.
Supported engineering teams in debug development chores.

Credentials #credentials

Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering | 2009-2013 @Kathmandu University
Certified Kubernetes Administrator | 2020-2023
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer | 2020-2023

Achievements #achievements

Open-source contributions.
Organize community meetups
Ncell App Camp 2014, Category Winner — Tourism | Nov 2014

Recent Itches #recent-itches

Building RAG with llama3.2
Explore Asahi