A problem formulation and solution methodology for design optimization of laminated thin-walled composite beams of generic section is presented. Objective functions and constraint equations are given in the form of beam stiffness. For two different problems one for open section and the other for closed section, the objective function considered is bending stiffness about x-axis. Depending upon the case, one can consider bending, torsional and axial stiffnesses. The different search and optimization algorithm, known as Evolution Strategies (ES) has been applied to find the optimal fibre orientation of composite laminates. A multi-level optimization approach is also implemented by narrowing down the size of search space for individual design variables in each successive level of optimization process. The numerical results presented demonstrate the computational advantage of the proposed method "Evolution strategies" which become pronounced to solve optimization of thin-walled composite beams of generic section.