Carlos Ballesteros

Carlos Ballesteros

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER - TECHNICAL LEAD

About me

I’m a software engineer and technical lead with over 20 years of experience building products:

I turn complex technical problems into maintainable products and effective teams.

My background includes technical leadership, building products from scratch, and collaborating with AI to accelerate development cycles.

After several exclusive contractor engagements with foreign product companies, I am now looking for a permanent role as an employee in Spain where I can contribute to one product and team over the long term.

Technologies

“Selection, adoption, and leadership of the right technology for the product and the team”. Examples:

Professional Experience

Independent contracting for product companies

Software Engineer · Exclusive client engagements

Registered as self-employed in Spain to work with foreign product companies that had no Spanish employing entity. The main engagements were exclusive relationships with one client at a time, including InVideo and GTAHUB, rather than simultaneous multi-client consulting.

  • Worked as part of one client team at a time because the foreign companies had no Spanish employing entity
  • Contributed from architecture through implementation, release, and maintenance while improving developer workflows
  • Deployed a backend with Elastic Beanstalk, RDS, ElastiCache, and Elasticsearch, serving assets through S3 and CloudFront

Parental leave · Sep 2025–Aug 2026 — Taken in two stages, with a three-month product-engineering engagement between them.

GTAHUB

Principal Engineer · Exclusive contractor

Halved compilation times, enabled full IDE debugging, introduced Datadog and PostHog observability, added traceability for server events and performance problems, simplified build workflows and architecture, and versioned game configuration across multiple servers. Progressively migrated both the Node.js backend and Vue 3 web application from JavaScript to TypeScript, introduced Kotlin coroutines, and documented and taught the resulting practices to the team.

  • Cut compilation times by 50% and enabled full IDE debugging
  • Added Datadog and PostHog observability for server events and performance problems
  • Simplified architecture and delivery workflows while mentoring developers

Outcome: Greater team autonomy and faster feature delivery.

InVideo

Principal Software Engineer · Exclusive contractor

Used KorGE and Kotlin Multiplatform as a hardware-accelerated 2D rendering layer for a mobile video editor, implementing features while evolving and supporting the underlying engine for Android and iOS.

  • Delivered product functionality while evolving the shared Kotlin Multiplatform rendering engine
  • Worked with GPU rendering, multimedia assets, asynchronous workflows, and performance-sensitive mobile code

Creditas

Software Engineer

Worked as a full-time software engineer at Creditas in Valencia, contributing to a product-led financial technology environment.

GuruWalk

Senior Developer

Migrated the frontend from JavaScript to TypeScript while reducing its size, optimized database structures and Ruby code, and improved CI and infrastructure. Built the mobile applications with Kotlin and Swift within a Ruby on Rails, MySQL, AWS, and Heroku product stack.

  • Shipped Android and iOS applications and migrated frontend code from JavaScript to TypeScript

Yaisa

Co-founder · CTO

Co-founded Yaisa at Demium and served as CTO, taking responsibility for frontend and backend development, interface implementation, core algorithms, and systems administration.

  • Owned frontend, backend, core algorithms, and infrastructure as co-founder and CTO

GoKoan

Freelance Fullstack Developer

Worked part-time as a freelance Fullstack Developer for GoKoan, contributing to its online study-planning product and the supporting open-source Kuick framework.

JetBrains

Technical Writer

Worked on the Ktor project as a Technical Writer, creating samples and tutorials, supporting users in Slack, and contributing product features and developer tooling.

  • Built the initial IntelliJ plugin for Ktor
  • Created tutorials, samples, features, and asynchronous Redis and MySQL protocol libraries

Schibsted Spain

Productivity Developer

Worked as a Productivity Developer at Schibsted Spain, creating internal tools to make developers across the company more productive.

Akamon Entertainment

Frontend Technical Lead · Senior SDK Programmer

Led frontend technology for mobile, web, and Facebook videogames at Akamon Entertainment and its Mundijuegos platform after serving as a Senior SDK Programmer.

  • Led frontend technology for mobile, web, and Facebook games

Akamon Entertainment

Senior SDK Programmer

Worked as a Senior SDK Programmer on mobile, web, and Facebook videogames for Akamon Entertainment and its Mundijuegos platform.

Freelance

Freelance Developer · Entrepreneur

Delivered private projects as an independent developer and entrepreneur, covering product implementation, backend services, and frontend web development.

Our.com

Game Developer

Developed Facebook games and platform integrations for Our.com through The Netwizzy Company, including tooling and backend systems that supported deployment and large player rankings.

  • Created an encrypted incremental-compression protocol for ActionScript and Java clients
  • Built deployment tooling and a real-time massive ranking system

Softonic

Web Developer · Productivity Developer

Worked on softonic.com as a PHP and MySQL developer, improving the site's performance and deployment process. Later received an internal promotion to Productivity Developer.

  • Improved website performance and deployments using PHP and MySQL
  • Built internal tools to improve developer experience and SVN checkout times

Freelance

Web Developer

Developed dozens of websites for personal projects, businesses, and other webmasters while also building practical Linux systems-administration experience.

Selected Projects

CAPYDOCS

Creator · Part-time personal project

Designed and implemented the product architecture, feature-flag system, progressive release strategy, scalable infrastructure, and iterative delivery roadmap. AI-assisted development accelerated execution while key architecture and product decisions remained under direct technical control.

  • Owned product design, architecture, planning, and implementation from scratch
  • Used AI-assisted development with direct human review of key technical decisions

Outcome: Released and maintained a working product as an ongoing part-time personal project.

KORGE

Creator · Coordinator

Architected a Kotlin Multiplatform game engine and supporting libraries for graphics, audio, I/O, data structures, serialization, dependency injection, and tooling across JVM, JavaScript, Android, iOS, desktop, and tvOS targets.

  • Built reusable graphics, audio, I/O, serialization, and developer tooling libraries
  • Led an international open-source community and maintained the ecosystem for eight years

Outcome: Global recognition, collaborations, and new career opportunities.

More Information

Contact

[email protected]

Availability: Permanent full-time employment in Spain · Remote / Hybrid in Valencia