Meet Carlos Freire: Empowering teams and driving innovation at DOCOsoft

Carlos Freire joined DOCOsoft in October 2024 in the newly created role of Engineering Manager. Married with three young sons, Carlos moved to Ireland from his native Brazil in 2019. The story of how he found his way from Rio de Janeiro to Dublin is well worth hearing from his own lips, if you ever get the chance.

Carlos grew up in what, by Brazilian standards, would be considered a small city – roughly the size of Dublin! He longed for the excitement and opportunity of living in a much larger city. He realised this dream, when, at 17, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to study for a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Technology.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, Carlos interned with a digital security firm for a year. He then spent the next three years working as a software engineer. During this time, he also completed a postgraduate qualification in Web-Based Information Systems at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Now a skilled developer as well as a natural communicator, Carlos moved into managerial and leadership roles early in his career. When he joined start-up MID Business in 2009, he was appointed Tech Lead, and subsequently Software Architect. Carlos ruefully admits that this involved a steep learning curve. ‘I had become good at software development,’ he says, ‘but I knew nothing about managing people. At first, I made many mistakes. I wanted to do everything myself. I micromanaged my team. But you learn a lot by making mistakes, and I quickly picked up some important new lessons and skills.’ Building a team and developing new products with MID proved a rewarding experience. Travelling to Las Vegas to collect an award for Latin America’s Most Innovative Information, Technology and Communication Solution at Futurecom 2011 was one of many highlights.

MID was one of the first companies to work with a new technology developed by Californian software business Vitria. Carlos’ high profile with MID and exposure to Vitria’s people in the US, led to an offer to work for Vitria’s Brazilian operation. This was a pivotal career moment, as this role was in pre-sales. Although still closely connected to the technical side of things, Carlos had an opportunity to learn a whole new set of skills in the pre-sales world.

After a few years with Vitria, Carlos returned to MID as Engineering Manager, successfully leading the company’s transition to Cloud. He then joined Elumini, where he built and led a software development division whose projects impacted millions of users and transformed industries including transport and e-recruitment.

Then, one day, completely out of the blue, Carlos received an interview request from a company in Ireland. ‘I had never thought about Ireland before,’ Carlos says, ‘but I was intrigued, so I took the interview.’ The interview didn’t lead anywhere, but a seed had been sown. So it was that, in January 2019, Carlos travelled to Dublin, enrolled in an advanced English Language programme, and subsequently applied for a number of roles, ultimately accepting a job offer from Guidewire.

At the time, Guidewire was pursuing the dream of moving from on-premise to cloud, and Carlos relished being part of that pursuit. He was a member of the team that created the company’s first cloud solution for Europe, another that promoted integration frameworks for cloud and on-premise solutions, and a third that worked on ‘updatability’ – reducing the time required for upgrades. But five years later, Carlos was again looking for a new role with managerial responsibilities, ultimately finding it with DOCOsoft, where he started in October 2024.

Why DOCOsoft?

There were many different factors that made accepting DOCOsoft’s offer an easy choice to make. First, the people. Everyone Carlos encountered during a long and thorough hire process filled him with confidence and encouragement. DOCOsoft’s independent ownership was another big plus. But Carlos was also impressed and intrigued – having led several London-market-focused projects with Guidewire – by how a company with fewer than 100 people could take on and beat companies twenty times its size and establish itself as the leading player in London’s insurance claims technology market. Finally, although his main focus is on leading DOCOsoft’s critical core CMS product, Carlos was also attracted by the company’s vision of taking its offer from on-premise to cloud-based with the DOCOsoft Vew product.

In his new role as Engineering Manager, Carlos provides the missing link between Head of Development Anthony Freeman and DOCOsoft’s growing software engineering and development teams. This will ensure there is someone with the necessary bandwidth to fully support and mentor the teams working on DOCOsoft’s core CMS product. As the foundation of DOCOsoft’s success, the CMS product presents unique engineering challenges that call for not just technical excellence but also innovative problem-solving skills. Carlos sees his role as empowering teams to continue evolving this business-critical platform, while maintaining the competitive advantage it gives DOCOsoft customers in processing complex claims.

As an experienced and well-rounded professional, Carlos has seen his share of new technologies come and go. But he fully appreciates the mindset of bright young developers keen to get their teeth stuck into new challenges and work with the latest tech. So, keeping everyone fully motivated and engaged is a key priority. Carlos says he gets the most satisfaction at this stage in his career from supporting and enabling those around him. He is also focused on ensuring that bugs and glitches in the core product are avoided or rooted out quickly to maintain and uphold the quality and reliability of the core product.

Having only recently joined DOCOsoft, Carlos is still very much in listening mode. ‘I have learned, from past experience,’ he says, ‘that, when you first join a company, you are going to want to make an impact. But you need to resist the temptation to rush in and change things before you have really understood the big picture. Otherwise, you can start creating solutions for problems that don’t exist and leaving real challenges unaddressed.’

With his unique combination of skills and experience, Carlos has a huge amount to contribute to his new role. ‘I am super excited to be part of the DOCOsoft family,’ he says. ‘This is a genuinely extraordinary company, and a great group of people to work with. I am really happy to be here and looking forward to playing a full and active part in supporting DOCOsoft’s future success.’