About Me
Freelance Senior Data Scientist with 12+ years of industry experience and a PhD in Robotics from UPC Barcelona. Open to new engagements, for example in:
- LLM agents & evaluation
- Logistics & transport optimization
- Discrete event simulation
- Machine learning & data science
- Robotics & autonomous systems
Currently at AstraZeneca (via Hybrid Mind), building LLM agent pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and a semantic data layer for enterprise workflows.
Previously at Meight, I designed an agent evaluation framework and built tools to support freight planning decisions. Before that at Glovo, I led the architecture of a discrete event simulator serving 120,000+ couriers across 23 countries and built optimization pipelines that reduced average delivery times across the network.
My PhD research focused on planning under uncertainty with noisy sensor data — skills applicable to autonomous systems and complex optimization problems. I'm particularly interested in opportunities in space, transportation, pharma & life sciences, and high-tech industries.
Beyond work, I'm a proud husband and father who enjoys running (road and trail), riding motorcycles, and good food from my Dutch and Catalan backgrounds.
Highlighted Work
Freight Optimization & LLM Agents
Meight (2024-2026)
- LLM Agents & Evaluation: Designed the evaluation framework for AI Agents, measuring faithfulness, tool usage, and cost for both structured and unstructured outputs, ensuring reliability for agents automating admin tasks for freight managers.
- Tour Optimization: Developed algorithms to optimize freight planning and reduce empty running, integrating real-time telematics and EU driving-time regulations to boost Revenue Per Kilometer (RPK) for carriers.
Delivery Simulator & Route Optimization
Glovo (2019-2024)
- Delivery Simulator Leadership: Led the architecture and refactor of the discrete event simulator. This tool was the optimization and testing ground for the dispatch and matching algorithms, allowing the team to tune hyperparameters and validate logic for a network spanning 23 countries and 120,000+ couriers.
- Matching Optimization: Built the automated optimization pipeline for the matching cost function, enabling rapid experimentation to balance delivery speed, courier earnings, and operational efficiency.
- Route Optimization (VRP): Led the VRP implementation for bundling, enabling the system to dynamically batch orders and optimize routes in real-time.
PhD & Research: Robotics & Uncertainty
IRI, CSIC-UPC & University of Groningen (2005-2017)
- PhD Thesis: Searching and Tracking of Humans in Urban Environments. Developed algorithms (MOMDP, POMCP) for robots to find people, treating the problem as a "Hide-and-Seek" game under uncertainty.
- MSc Thesis: Solving Ambiguity in Global Localization. Focused on resolving robot position ambiguity in symmetrical environments using probabilistic sensor models.
- BSc Research: Early work on SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) using Growing Neural Gas (GNG) networks to map unknown environments.
Projects & Tools
Code projects, research demos, and personal tools exploring optimization, AI, and interactive visualizations. View all projects →
Professional & Research Projects
CVRPTW Solver
Personal project exploring vehicle routing optimization for last-mile delivery. Built to experiment with Google OR-Tools and constraint programming techniques.
Research Chat (RAG)
AI chat interface for my publications using Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Ask questions about my robotics research and get cited answers.
Hide & Seek Belief
Interactive demo from my PhD research. Compare probabilistic search algorithms (POMCP, particle filters) for robot navigation.
Personal Tools
💹 pfm — Portfolio Manager
Open-source, self-hosted investment tracker: LLM-powered statement import, money-weighted returns, dividend & risk analytics and Spanish IRPF tax tooling. Your data stays on your own server.
🏃 RaceFinder
Find and plan your next running adventure. Browse 500+ road and trail races worldwide with advanced filtering, favorites tracking, and race comparison tools.
Career Knowledge Graph
Interactive force-directed graph showing 25 years of skills and technologies. Explore 100+ nodes with timeline filtering and search.
Featured Articles
Technical writings on AI evaluation, simulation, and optimization. View all articles →
Building a Self-Hosted Portfolio Manager
Jun 2026 · Project write-up
Why I built pfm — a privacy-first, self-hosted portfolio tracker with LLM-powered statement import, money-weighted returns, and Spanish tax tooling — and what it was like building it with an AI agent.
Read article 💬 AskThe Biomechanics of Being a Tall Runner
May 2026 · Personal essay with data
Analysis of 767 personal runs against the Ferber et al. dataset of 651 treadmill sessions. Taller runners take fewer, longer strides — and carry a measurable energy cost. The 180 spm target was not designed for 200 cm runners.
Read article 💬 AskFrom Autocomplete to AI Agents
Apr 2026 · Personal essay
A personal essay on how AI coding tools have evolved from simple autocomplete into autonomous agents — and what that shift means in practice. Includes a companion reference log of recurring LLM coding failure patterns.
Read article 💬 AskGet in Touch
Email: alex@goldhoorn.net