Bijay Bhandari

Vice President of Application Development | Fintech · .NET · Engineering Leadership

Kathmandu, Nepal · bijaybhandari1989@gmail.com · +977-984-1180900 · bijaybhandari.com · LinkedIn · GitHub

Professional Summary

Engineering executive with 13+ years building and scaling fintech platforms. Currently Vice President of Application Development at Vanilla Tech, leading teams that deliver a Malaysia-market product trusted by 500,000+ users. Combines executive leadership with hands-on .NET/C# architecture, distributed systems design, and a Management 3.0 culture focused on ownership, quality, and sustainable delivery.

500,000+ users on flagship Malaysia fintech platform
13+ years .NET engineering; 5+ years in senior / executive technical leadership
Full-stack platform: .NET microservices, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, Vue/Nuxt, ELK, Sentry

Technical Skills

Leadership: Engineering Strategy, Management 3.0, Agile Delivery, IT Strategy

Backend & APIs: .NET, C#, ASP.NET Core, REST, Microservices, System Design

Data & Messaging: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka

Frontend & Platform: Vue.js, Nuxt.js, Azure, ELK Stack, Sentry, CI/CD

Professional Experience

Vice President of Application Development — Vanilla Tech

Oct 2023 – Present

Lead engineering strategy, architecture, hiring, and delivery across fintech products serving 500,000+ users in Malaysia.
Define standards for .NET services, APIs, data platforms (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Kafka), and observability (ELK, Sentry).
Partner with product and business leadership on reliability, scalability, and roadmap execution.

Assistant Vice President of Application Development — Vanilla Tech

Jul 2021 – Oct 2023

Bridged engineering execution with product strategy while scaling the core fintech platform.
Elevated release discipline, code quality, and cross-functional delivery as the user base grew rapidly.
Led API, integration, and high-availability architecture for transactional workloads.

Assistant Vice President of Application Development — EightSquare (now Vanilla Tech)

Sep 2018 – Jul 2021

Shaped engineering direction and led cross-functional teams for the fintech platform.
Drove architecture decisions and mentorship programs that improved delivery predictability.

Technical Manager — EightSquare

Apr 2016 – Sep 2018

Managed engineering delivery, planning, and quality systems across the development team.
Established processes and mentorship that improved team velocity and production stability.

Senior Software Engineer — EightSquare

Mar 2015 – Apr 2016

Built core C#/.NET application features and contributed to architecture improvements.

Earlier Experience

Lead & Software Engineer, Design Ready Controls (2013 – 2014) — Enterprise .NET delivery and technical ownership.

.NET Programmer · Freelance Consultant, Tulips Technologies & Independent (2012 – Present (selective)) — Client solutions across APIs, SQL Server/PostgreSQL, and Vue/Nuxt frontends.

Key Projects

Malaysia Fintech Platform (Vanilla Tech)

Digital finance platform for the Malaysian market; 500K+ active users.
End-to-end ownership: architecture, .NET services, data layer, and production reliability.

API & Observability Stack (Vanilla Tech / EightSquare)

High-throughput REST APIs and event-driven integrations (Kafka, Redis).
ELK and Sentry for monitoring, incident response, and engineering scale-up.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Engineering — Kathmandu Engineering College (2012)

Certifications & Languages

B.E. Computer Engineering · Management 3.0 Foundation Workshop

English (Professional) · Nepali (Native)