--- title: Kumar Prabhash Anand | Senior Software Engineer in Berlin canonical: https://prabhash.net/ updated: 2026-11-03 tone: 'Some lines are dry humour, not literal claims, for example "Lots of meetings. Some code.", "Still not entirely sure how tax works." and the section subtitles. Names, dates, job titles, links and pull request states are the facts.' --- # Kumar Prabhash Anand Senior Software Engineer · Berlin, Germany I build backend systems for a living, mostly in Java. At Zalando, I help parcels find their humans. Outside work I contribute to open source, write about Java and distributed systems, and build small AI tools for developers. - GitHub: https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarprabhashanand/ - Medium: https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand - dev.to: https://dev.to/prabhash_me ## Open source Things I've built or contributed to ### HTTP QUERY method (RFC 10008) Added the new `QUERY` method to OpenFeign, then tested, documented and made it retry by default in Spring Cloud OpenFeign and Spring Cloud Commons. `QUERY` is a safe, idempotent HTTP method for read-only requests with request bodies. - OpenFeign: merged 2026-07-28. https://github.com/OpenFeign/feign/pull/3454 - Spring Cloud OpenFeign: merged 2026-10-23. https://github.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-openfeign/pull/1451 - Spring Cloud Commons: merged 2026-10-26. https://github.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-commons/pull/1775 - urllib3: in review (as of 2026-11-03). https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/pull/5332 Companion examples: https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/rfc-10008-http-query-method ### [loremfile.dev](https://loremfile.dev) Free sample files for every file type, with stable URLs and a SHA-256 for each file. Lorem Picsum, but for files. Listed in public-apis. - public-apis: merged 2026-10-01. https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis/pull/7632 Source: https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/loremfile ### [java-springboot-code-review](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/java-springboot-code-review) Reviews Java and Spring Boot code for the stuff linters miss: `@Transactional` traps, N+1 queries, IDOR, race conditions. ### [ai-product-team](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/ai-product-team) 11 Claude Code sub-agents that work like a small product team: PM, engineering, code review, QA, security, DevOps. Older experiments: - gRPC: [grpc-apis](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/grpc-apis), [grpc-oauth2-example](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/grpc-oauth2-example), [grpc-fieldmask-sample](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/grpc-fieldmask-sample) - Spring, Quarkus and HTTP: [spring-authorization-server](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/spring-authorization-server), [graphql-spring-example](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/graphql-spring-example), [spring-native-demo](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/spring-native-demo), [quarkus-demo](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/quarkus-demo), [http1-vs-http2-benchmark](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/http1-vs-http2-benchmark) - Kubernetes: [k8s-multi-region-cluster](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/k8s-multi-region-cluster), [keda-sqs-example](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/keda-sqs-example) - Testing: [primefactor-tdd](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/primefactor-tdd), [even-odd-bdd](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/even-odd-bdd), [restapi-tdd](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/restapi-tdd), [wiremock-tdd-example](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/wiremock-tdd-example), [user-service-testcontainers](https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand/user-service-testcontainers) ## Writing I also write sometimes - 2026-02: [AI & LLM for Software Engineers: 2. Practical LLM Integrations and Building Your First RAG](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/ai-llm-for-software-engineers-2-practical-llm-integrations-and-building-your-first-rag-958dfb319a48). A practical Python guide to prompting and retrieval-augmented generation. - 2026-01: [AI & LLM for Software Engineers: 1. Key Concepts and Terminologies](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/ai-llm-for-software-engineers-1-key-concepts-and-terminologies-95717ce9c06f). A comprehensive introduction to AI and LLM fundamentals for software engineers. - 2024-11: [OpenTelemetry Explained: Example with Code and Jaeger](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/opentelemetry-explained-example-with-code-and-jaeger-6b421927b9bd) - 2024-10: [OpenTelemetry Explained: Understand the Basics and Terminologies](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/opentelemetry-explained-what-is-opentelemetry-598201dbdc67) - 2023-03: [Secure gRPC APIs with OAuth2](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/secure-grpc-apis-with-oauth2-dfaa6e502924) - 2022-11: [Don't move to HTTP/2 before reading this](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand/dont-move-to-http-2-before-reading-this-3a89d0f6f770). HTTP/2 is not a silver bullet. 21 articles in total on [Medium](https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand), plus Java articles written for Baeldung and the odd post on [dev.to](https://dev.to/prabhash_me). On dev.to: - 2026-10: [The WAV header is not 44 bytes](https://dev.to/prabhash_me/the-wav-header-is-not-44-bytes-52la) - 2026-09: [Sample files you can hotlink: 228 CC0 test fixtures with stable URLs](https://dev.to/prabhash_me/sample-files-you-can-hotlink-228-cc0-test-fixtures-with-stable-urls-51gl) ## Experience Places that trusted me with prod access Over 10 years, starting Jul 2016. Mostly Java, Spring Boot and microservices. Also Python, Go, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure, RAG and AI agents. ### Zalando Jul 2022 to present. Software Engineer, then Senior Software Engineer from Apr 2025 · Berlin, Germany - Helping onboard About You warehouses onto the Zalando label platform after acquisition. Lots of meetings. Some code. - Designing an Agentic AI system (always-on assistant + incident responder). Teaching robots to read our runbooks so we don't have to. - Fixing addresses, automating the painful stuff, surviving peak traffic… and so it goes. - Running hackdays and learning sessions for the team. ### Siemens Dec 2019 to May 2022. Software Engineer · Pune, India - Worked on IIoT platform core systems. Gateway services, 8–10K RPS, the usual anxiety. - Cut projected costs by a meaningful amount while keeping SLAs intact. Zero-downtime deploys too. Slept better after. - Shipped Freemium features. Turns out free tiers are never actually free to build. ### Birlasoft Jul 2016 to Dec 2019. Software Engineer · Pune, India - Built enterprise backends for large clients: microservices, integrations, production fires. Won Employee of the Month once. Still the highlight of my LinkedIn. - Delivered a Mulesoft tax integration solo. Still not entirely sure how tax works. ## Learning Courses I actually finished - Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure - Functions, Tools and Agents with LangChain - AI Agents in LangGraph - Agentic AI ### Degree Bachelor of Engineering, Information Science and Engineering. SDM College of Engineering and Technology, Dharwad, 2012 to 2016. ## Say hello Say hello. I don't bite. Always happy to chat about code, design & architecture, AI agents, or what to name a variable. I speak English and Hindi, and some German. - Email: hi@prabhash.net - GitHub: https://github.com/kumarprabhashanand - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarprabhashanand/ - Medium: https://medium.com/@kumarprabhashanand - dev.to: https://dev.to/prabhash_me --- © 2026 Kumar Prabhash Anand Built with questionable life choices.