About Bharat Kunwar

I’m Bharat (although I usually go by brtkwr handle on the tinternet). I’ve lived in Bristol since 2012 - a city I love love love!

My family doubled in size with the arrival of twins at the end of 2019. Balancing family life with work has given me a deeper appreciation for efficiency and good tooling.

I’m passionate about:

Societal impact of technology
Discovering vegan cuisine
Exploring coffee shops
Attending hackathons and meetups
Collaborating on coding projects (e.g. fast.ai, smart contracts, etc.)

Places I’ve Lived Link to heading

1989: Born in Burtibang, western Nepal
1991 - 1994: Joined my father in Hong Kong where he was posted with the Brigade of Gurkhas
1995 - 2003: Resided in Kathmandu Valley, partly with family and later at boarding school
2003 - 2005: Reunited with family in the UK (Blackpool)
2005 - 2008: Lived in Folkestone, Kent
2009 - 2012: Studied in Bath, Somerset
2012 - Present: Moved to Bristol, Avon and stayed put!

Places I’ve Been Link to heading

2025: Morocco - Marrakesh, Essaouira, Ouarzazate (Apr); Croatia - Split, Trogir, Maslinica (May); France - Annecy, Grenoble, Tours, Nantes, Le Mont-Saint-Michel (Aug); Belgium - Brasschaat (Oct); Netherlands - Breda (Oct)
2024: Spain - Granada, Seville, Málaga, Marbella (Feb); Türkiye - Istanbul, Antalya, Muğla (Jul-Aug); Belgium and Netherlands - Bruges, Ghent, Efteling amusement park (Oct); Norway - Tromsø (Dec)
2023: The four of us went on a 3 month tour of Asia again. After a family visit to Nepal - Kathmandu, Pokhara, Bhaktapur (Mar-Apr) for 3 weeks, we stayed in Thailand - Bangkok, Phuket, Ko Lanta (Apr-May) for 6 weeks, followed by Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur (May-Jun) for a week and Sri Lanka - Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Unawatuna (Jun-Jul) for 6 weeks where we were also joined by family and friends. I also had the chance to work remotely from Thailand and Sri Lanka and the time zone difference worked out really well as I was doing things with the children in the morning and starting work in the afternoon. Also visited Norway - Oslo (Jul).
2022: Italy - Catania, Taormina, Siracusa, Noto (Sep-Oct)
2019: Interrail trip through Austria - Vienna, Hungary - Budapest, Switzerland - Basel, Zürich, Geneva (Feb); Croatia - Pula, Ližnjan (Jul); Slovenia - Ljubljana, Bled, Bohinj (Jul)
2018: Belgium - Bruges, Damme (Jun); Germany - Cologne (Dec); Netherlands - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden (Jun, Dec); Portugal - Idanha-a-Nova (Jul, Boom Festival); Spain - Madrid (Jul)
2017: Poland - Warsaw (Feb). Kyla and I embarked on a 6-month journey through Asia, exploring Nepal - Kathmandu, Pokhara, Patan, Bhaktapur (May-Jul); India - New Delhi (Jul); Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai (Jul-Aug); Myanmar - Yangon, Mandalay, Hpa-an (Aug); Vietnam - Hanoi, Ha Long, Hue, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City (Aug-Oct); Cambodia - Phnom Penh, Siem Reap (Sep); Laos - Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Pakxe (Sep); China - Kunming, Dali, Chengdu, Beijing (Oct-Nov). You can view our adventures in our travel photos.
2016: Italy - Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence (Jun); Nepal (Oct); Norway - Oslo (Nov)
2015: Germany - Berlin (Feb); Norway (Apr); Italy - Como, Milan (Sep); Spain - Barcelona (Sep); Netherlands - Amsterdam (Nov)
2014: Morocco - Marrakesh (Feb); Netherlands - Amsterdam (Oct); France - Paris (cycling adventure from Bath)
2013: Greece - Athens (Feb); Italy - Veneto (Apr); Germany - Cologne, Aachen (Sep)
2012: France, Spain, Portugal (Jul-Aug, hitchhiked to Boom Festival); India (Oct-Nov); Nepal (Nov-Dec)
2011: Spain - Tenerife (Feb); Belgium - Bruges (Jul); France - Paris (Jul)
2010: Spain - Mallorca (Jun); Guatemala (Aug); Spain - Tenerife (Nov)
2008: USA - New York (Feb, A-level art trip with school)
2007: Nepal (Aug) - first time back since coming to the UK in 2003. Visited my birth village with my grandad (his last trip back)

Read how I extracted this data from geotagged photos in my macOS Photos library.

Places I’ve Worked Link to heading

2024 - Present: Senior Software Engineer at Two, leading the platform team overseeing infrastructure, SRE practices, and technical architecture. I architect microservices infrastructure processing millions in B2B transactions with 99.9% uptime, champion AI-assisted development tools, and drive GitOps principles using Terraform, Ansible, Helm and ArgoCD.
2021 - 2024: Software Engineer at Two, building REST APIs handling 2M+ requests daily using Python and Go, implementing microservices on Kubernetes (GKE), and building CI/CD pipelines enabling 20+ daily deployments.
2018 - 2021: Software Engineer at StackHPC. Core contributor to the Magnum OpenStack project with 130+ upstream commits, implementing cluster lifecycle management and auto-scaling capabilities. Automated HPC cloud management for STFC, Diamond Light Source and other research institutions.
2016 - 2017: Research Engineer at Airbus Group Innovations. Integrated Keras and OpenAI Gym with Aimsun traffic simulation for autonomous vehicle research. Developed reinforcement learning models for autonomous vehicle coordination, boosting traffic flow by 15% as part of the Flourish consortium.
2012 - 2013: Placement Candidate and Manager at Engineers Without Borders / Shelter Associates in Pune, India. Co-developed a GIS web application automating slum data collection and analysis, led volunteer recruitment delivering a mobile app that streamlined survey processes, and created data visualisation dashboards that influenced local policy decisions.

Places I’ve Studied Link to heading

2012 - 2017: PhD in Engineering at University of Bristol under supervision of Anders Johansson and Filippo Simini with a focus on mass evacuation modelling. My research is available here.
2008 - 2012: Master’s degree in Civil and Architectural Engineering at University of Bath
2007 - 2009: A-levels at Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone
2003 - 2007: GCSEs at Carr Hill High School, Kirkham
1999 - 2003: Angel’s Heart School, Kathmandu
1997 - 1999: Little Angel’s School, Kathmandu
1994 - 1997: Jupiter School, Kathmandu