Niraj Paudel
Software Engineer · Writer · Seeker
A decade of building software.
Now learning what it means when the machines start building too.
Auckland, New Zealand
Ten years of building software. Started in Kathmandu, built products for companies in Nepal and overseas, led teams, was briefly a CTO, and ended up in Auckland working on legal AI. The path wasn't linear.
I care about correctness. I love testing — TDD, thinking through edge cases, building things that hold up. It's where I feel most like myself in code.
AI is changing what engineers do and I find that more interesting than frightening. I work with it daily at Law Cyborg — building RAG pipelines, working with AI tools, thinking about how the tools reshape the work.
I also write. Essays, parables, reflections on why people do what they do. I think the engineers who last are the ones who understand people, not just systems.
Technical Inventory
- Fluent in
- JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, Rust, PHP
- Practiced in
- Node.js, React, Vue, .NET, Django, SvelteKit
- Versed in
- PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, ElasticSearch
- Familiar with
- Azure, AWS, Docker, Terraform, CI/CD, Scrum
- Currently exploring
- RAG pipelines, AI workflows, Claude Code, LLM evaluation
The Work
A decade of shipping software
Law Cyborg Auckland, New Zealand
Software Engineer, Data Team
"Where the classical engineer meets the AI transition, in real time."
Started as an intern through the AIS Intensive Internship Course — and was hired part-time after the internship ended, which meant something. Now working on data preparation for legal AI: building and maintaining RAG pipelines for legal question-answering across 30+ practice areas, and the Artifact System. Contributing to the platform's expansion from New Zealand into Australia and the United Kingdom. Using AI-first workflows daily — Cursor and Claude Code are part of how the work gets done.
UBA Solutions Lalitpur, Nepal
Software Development Engineer in Test
"The role where I fell in love with the craft of building software."
Part of the scrum team for myfonts.com — Monotype's font distribution portal holding 43% of the online paid Latin font market. This was not just testing. I was embedded in the product team: writing automation scripts that caught regressions before they shipped, building internal tools to speed up QA, designing micro-sites and micro-services. The product was global, the team was tight, and the work had direct impact on millions of font users. This is where the craft became something I cared about deeply.
Led Vue2→Vue3 migration for Monotype Foundry Platform. Built the Bundles feature end-to-end (PHP Lumen + Node.js + Vue). Managed user migration from Fonts.com to MonotypeFonts.com. Implemented localised email delivery with RabbitMQ across monolith and microservices.
Led a startup as full-time CTO. Architected solutions, managed the engineering team, collaborated with marketing, ran sprints. Made strategic tech decisions for scalability and growth.
Built modules for Bookmundi travel booking portal: Trip Planner, Travel Experts, Notifications, Search, Maps. Full-stack with SEO focus.
Payment gateway integrations (Vericheck), MEAN stack applications. First professional years — learned clean code, Docker, AWS, microservices.
The Research
Academic work at Auckland Institute of Studies
"Small Wins" Slack Bot: Dual Modes
Built a Slack bot that automates team recognition in software engineering teams. Two delivery modes: real-time "tiny win" notifications when teammates complete tasks (GitHub commits, Trello card moves), and a daily digest that batches all wins into a single end-of-day summary. Addresses research on notification fatigue and the psychology of small wins in remote and hybrid teams.
Reliability of RAGAS Metrics across LLM Judges
Investigating whether RAG evaluation metrics (RAGAS) produce consistent results across different LLM judges — GPT-4o mini, Llama-3.1-8B, and Gemini-1.5-Flash. Uses a controlled tournament methodology with the WikiEval dataset across four quality variants: high quality, poor quality, noisy context, and hallucinated. Analysing score differences, ranking consistency, and inter-judge disagreement to determine whether RAGAS metrics are reliable or too dependent on the judge model.
The Notebook
Reflections, parables, and technical essays
The In-Between
When you are on the road to self-improvement, there comes an intermediate phase where it becomes too difficult and demanding.
Strength in Weakness
Sometimes, being the weakest in the room is quiet a gift.
Ikigai
A fish spends his life trying to put on pigeon feathers, believing that if he looks like them, one day he might fly.
- gRPC Concepts Series
- Protocol Buffers: Understanding Concepts
- JWT Validation in Micro-Services
- How JavaScript Directs the Flow of Electricity
- Concurrency Models in Node.js
- Understanding Rust's Memory Management
- Functional Programming for Beginners
- Why and How to Create a Portfolio Website Using Svelte
- 5 Things I Learned from Elon Musk
The Learning
Formal education and the institutions that shaped me
Master of Information Technology
Auckland Institute of Studies
Auckland, New Zealand · 2024 — Present
This is where both academic research projects were developed, and where the Law Cyborg internship originated through the Intensive Internship Course. Supervised by Dr. Shabana Ali.
In Their Words
From people I have built things with
Niraj is an outstanding product-minded Engineer who I had the privilege to work with on MyFonts.com. He was instrumental in decreasing release cycle time from "weeks" to "minutes" by leveraging his technical expertise and keen attention to detail for building first-class test automation from the ground up. I was always impressed by his domain knowledge and constant expansion of T-shaped skills with passion for learning more, while supporting other team members hone their own skills. It was a delight to see his professional growth, and he would be a great partner on any serious team.
We co-founded Business Pazes together and Niraj later served the organisation as CTO. I can definitely say he is highly technical — he comes up with right technical solutions and designs for all the problems you throw at him. Besides, he mentored a lot of new employees efficiently and got them up to speed within a very short period of time. He is empathetic and knows exactly how to deal with people issues. He is a tech-savvy leader who leads teams by example. Any employer would be lucky to have him.
One of Niraj's standout qualities is his openness. He readily seeks assistance, offers support, and diplomatically declines unreasonable requests, always providing clear explanations. He ensures his availability is transparent from the outset, fostering effective communication within our Scrum team and motivating others to embrace openness. As a senior member, Niraj demonstrated strong leadership skills — and I found myself learning valuable lessons from his exemplary behaviour.
Though brief, the time I worked with Niraj was enough to notice his impressive work ethics. Niraj is hard-working, smart and a good listener — he tries to understand work from multiple perspectives. He also has a progressive mindset when it comes to decision making and problem solving. His current job speaks for itself, and I need not say more. Keep it up, Jaggu!