Ashesh Nepal — Software Engineer Building APIs and Cloud Systems

Who I Am

I'm Ashesh Nepal, an Associate Software Engineer at Metropolitan Council in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. I graduated from St. Cloud State University with a B.S. in Computer Science (Magna Cum Laude) and I now spend my days building cloud integrations, minimal APIs, and internal developer tooling with C#, .NET, and Azure.

Outside of work, I'm drawn to the same kinds of problems — building tools that make other developers' lives easier. My current stack leans heavily on .NET, Azure Service Bus, Next.js, and Python, but I'm always picking up whatever the problem demands.

The Journey to Software Engineering

My path into software started at St. Cloud State, where I got involved early with the Computer Science Club as Project Management Officer. That role put me at the center of hackathons, study sessions, and collaborative projects that shaped how I think about building software with a team.

Competing was a big part of it too. I represented SCSU at the Mid-Central ICPC Regional Programming Contest and the MICS Programming Contest, which sharpened my problem-solving instincts under pressure. Hackathons became another proving ground — I won first place at Huskies Hack x Immersion Data Solutions, first place at the SCSU Hackathon, and second place at the Aspen Tech x SCSU Hackathon.

Academically, I earned the F. Glen Hamilton Scholarship and a Mathematics & Statistics / Computer Science department scholarship, which reinforced my commitment to the discipline and gave me the freedom to focus on deeper projects.

Building Z8ter

One of the projects I'm most proud of is Z8ter — a Python-based web framework I designed to simplify UI rendering. The idea came from wanting a lighter, more direct way to build web interfaces in Python without the overhead of larger frameworks.

Z8ter hit 200+ downloads on PyPI, which was exciting for a project that started as an experiment. I presented it at a university tech showcase, and the feedback from both students and faculty helped me refine the API surface. Building a framework taught me more about API design, developer experience, and open-source maintenance than any single course could.

Research and Genius Deck

During my senior year, I co-authored research on Genius Deck, an LLM-based study tool that uses automated content extraction and semantic modeling to generate study materials from lecture content. We presented the paper at MICS 2024, which was my first experience navigating the academic research and peer-review process.

The project sat at the intersection of AI and education — two areas I find genuinely interesting. Working on Genius Deck gave me hands-on experience with large language models, prompt engineering, and the challenges of building AI applications that are actually useful to people.

What This Blog Will Be

This blog is where I'll share what I'm learning, building, and thinking about. Expect posts on .NET and Azure patterns I encounter at work, side projects and open-source experiments, thoughts on developer tooling and DX, and the occasional deep dive into something that caught my attention.

If any of that resonates, I'm glad you're here. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or check out my work on GitHub. Let's build something.