Born and raised in Spain, Carlos Baena came to the United States in 1994. He has worked at Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar Animation Studios on the Jurassic Park, Star Wars and Toy Story franchises, as well as on films such as Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and Wall-E. For his work on the film Cars, Carlos received an Annie Award nomination in 2007.

Carlos has directed the acclaimed short films Play by Play (2011), La Noria (2018) and Tranvía (2021). La Noria, nominated at the Tribeca Film Festival, won over a hundred awards, including Best Animation at the Webby Awards 2020. Baena was Executive Producer on Paramount+'s feature film The Tiger's Apprentice. In 2022 and 2023, he worked as a director on the series Wondla for AppleTV+. He has also directed Star Trek short films for Paramount Pictures and William Shatner, with Unification being the most recent and achieving the record as the most viewed short film of the franchise on YouTube.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, where he works as a Director at Skydance.