About Carlos

I'm Carlos Freund, a Senior Backend Engineer with 15 years of experience building production software. My journey began with a software development apprenticeship in Germany, where I learned the fundamentals of building robust, maintainable systems.

After years of working in corporate environments and even founding my own startup (food-algorithm.de - a nutrition optimization web app), I made a deliberate choice to step away from the traditional career path. I left a €80k job to freelance from Belize, seeking the freedom to work on problems that truly matter while living life on my own terms.

Today, I help companies integrate AI into real backend systems — not as pilots or prototypes, but as production reality. At KPS, I was the first engineer to formally push for AI adoption, building the internal case, presenting the roadmap, and delivering on the promise. I built MCP servers for LLM tool integration and work daily with agents, embeddings, and Python AI tooling — on top of my 15-year Java/Spring backend foundation.

What sets me apart is that I'm not just a consumer of AI tools — I'm a contributor. I have multiple merged pull requests in OpenHands (the leading open-source AI coding agent with 70k+ stars), including core work on context-window management and LLM cost optimization. I also contributed a critical token-counter fix to litellm, the universal LLM gateway library used across the industry.

I ship autonomously without hand-holding. Whether it's building a complete communication system for troy GmbH (handling email, PDF letters, SMS, and print fulfillment), writing firmware for an underwater dive propulsion vehicle, or revealing critical security vulnerabilities in AI systems, I take ownership and deliver results.