Lucas Chen, Software Engineer at Zynga AdTech: a conversation

1. Today

   1. Recruiter:

      Hi Lucas, thanks for making time. Who am I talking to?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Hi! I’m Lucas Chen.

      Software engineer building AI tooling and ad tech at Zynga.

      Contact card

      Lucas Chen

      Software Engineer · Zynga AdTech

      Toronto, Canada · B.Eng., Software Engineering (Co-op), McMaster University (2020–2025)

      GitHubLinkedInRésumé

   3. Recruiter:

      So what are you working on now?

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   4. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Right now I'm building a platform for delegating software work to coding agents, where results have to be verified independently instead of taken on the agent's word.

      I designed and led our internal tooling for ad-serving configurations, an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server and tools that let AI assistants work with ad-serving configuration, and a project that helps our games identify high-value ads.

      I also worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a 2–3 hour workflow to about 20 minutes.

      👀

   5. Quick replies

      • Walk me through your career
      • What’s the impact been?
      • Anything you built on the side?
      • What do you work with?
      • Let’s talk

Experience

1. May 2025 – Present

   1. Recruiter:

      Can you walk me through your career?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Sure, newest first.

   3. LC
      Lucas:

      Software EngineerZynga · Toronto, ON

      AdTech team: AI tooling and ad projects.

      Designed and led internal tooling for ad-serving configurations: an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server and tools that let AI assistants work with ad-serving configuration.

      Worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.

      Designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.

      👀

2. May 2023 – Jun 2024

   1. Recruiter:

      And before Zynga?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Full Stack Engineering InternHexagon Manufacturing Intelligence

      Developed 15+ UI and 10+ API production features for the Nexus Platform, using React and Express with TypeScript.

      Reduced load times for user list pages by 97% by optimizing API calls and refining Express APIs.

      Cut test automation start-up time by up to 98% by parallelizing the Playwright test suite setup.

      Reduced API response time by up to 82% with an Azure Cosmos DB proxy that moved Express APIs to C# .NET database pagination.

      TypeScriptReactExpressC#.NETAzure Cosmos DBPlaywright

      🔥

3. Sep 2022 – Apr 2023

   1. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Teaching AssistantMcMaster University · Hamilton, ON

      1P13 Integrated Engineering Project (Sep–Dec 2022).

      2GA3 Computer Architecture (Jan–Apr 2023).

4. May 2022 – Aug 2022

   1. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Software Engineering InternExchange Solutions

      E-commerce and loyalty platforms: a Shopify app on AWS, plus AR, blockchain and data-visualization work.

      Made e-commerce client onboarding over 10x faster by building AWS Lambda components.

      Led an augmented reality proof of concept for a national loyalty program, built with 8th Wall WebAR and JavaScript.

      Raised a loyalty platform’s user engagement by 4% by integrating it with blockchain assets, using Next.js, Ethereum and the Alchemy API.

      Built a real-time data visualization dashboard (D3.js, Snowflake), improving early error catching and data comparisons by over 10%.

      AWS LambdaJavaScriptNext.jsD3.jsSnowflake8th Wall WebARShopify API

      🔥

5. Oct 2021 – 2022

   1. LC

      Lucas Chen

      AI Research MemberMcMaster Artificial Intelligence Society · Hamilton, ON

      Worked with a team of four developers on training a humanoid to walk and navigate obstacles in a ragdoll physics simulation.

      Used C# and Unity to train and simulate the humanoid.

      C#Unity

6. Jun 2021 – Sep 2021

   1. Recruiter:

      How did it all start?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Software Engineering InternInsideDesk

      Found 50+ bugs through QA testing, validated bug fixes, and was the link between clients and the development team.

      Cut manual tasks by over 30% with custom JavaScript Slack bots that automate the customer onboarding notifications.

      Wrote automated end-to-end UI tests with Selenium and Python, cutting manual QA testing by 40%.

      JavaScriptPythonSeleniumSlack

      🔥

Impact

1. Zynga · results

   1. Recruiter:

      What’s the impact been?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Here are three things I’d point to at Zynga AdTech.

      Zynga AdTech · Impact

      Ad-config MCP

      I designed and led internal tooling for ad-serving configurations at Zynga: a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and tools that let AI assistants work with ad-serving configuration.

      Designed and led by meAIMCPAdTech

      See it in the career thread →
   3. LC
      Lucas:

      Zynga AdTech · Impact

      LiveOps agent

      I worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.

      Time to complete one LiveOps workflow

      Before2–3 h

      After~20 min

      AI agentsLiveOpsAutomation

      See it in the career thread →

      🔥

   4. LC
      Lucas:

      Zynga AdTech · Impact

      High-value ads

      I designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.

      Designed and led by meAdTech

      See it in the career thread →

Projects

1. Side projects

   1. Recruiter:

      Anything you built on the side?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      A few. Sharing the newest first.

      agent-platform

      A control plane for safely delegating software work to autonomous coding agents.

      A harness-agnostic platform for handing software work to coding agents in Cursor, Claude Code or any other harness. The goal, from my spec: maximize architecture-approved, verified engineering output per dollar and per minute of human attention.

      TypeScriptNode.jsJSON Schema (Ajv)CommanderYAML

      Case study →GitHub →

   3. LC
      Lucas:

      tennisbooker.app

      Books tennis and pickleball courts the moment booking opens, every morning.

      My parents had to set a 7:30 a.m. alarm every week to get courts at our local club, so I automated it. Members set weekly schedules in a web app, and a bot books the courts each morning and texts the results.

      TypeScriptPlaywrightReactExpressPostgreSQL

      Case study →GitHub (2023 version) →

   4. LC
      Lucas:

      Mobile meal planner: pick meals, get a grocery list, track calories and protein.

      A mobile-first meal planner: choose meals and servings, turn them into a grocery list, and track calories and protein against personal targets. Our team of five built it as a front-end prototype on mock meal data, so the “AI-powered meal prep” step is a UI concept.

      ReactViteMUIAuth0Chart.js

      Case study →Live demo →

   5. LC
      Lucas:

      Android app that matches riders headed the same way so they can share a taxi.

      CarpoolX matches riders heading to the same destination so they can share a taxi and split the fare, with an upfront fare estimate and safety checks for riding with strangers. Four of us built it as a React Native Android app on a Flask and Firebase backend.

      React NativePythonFlaskFirebaseGoogle Maps Platform

      Case study →GitHub →

   6. LC
      Lucas:

      restday.tech

      A workout planner that schedules rest days, not just workouts. Built at DeltaHacks 8.

      A weekly workout planner that deliberately schedules rest days, designed to use Fitbit sleep and activity data to decide when to train and when to recover. Willie Pai and I built it in 36 hours at DeltaHacks 8.

      ReactFitbit Web APIstyled-componentsNode.jsFigma

      Case study →Devpost →GitHub →

      🏆

   7. LC
      Lucas:

      Also in the camera roll:

      • StudySpot · Nov 2024: Find a place to study at McMaster: search, filters, ratings, favourites and a map.
      • UnPassword · Nov 2024: A password manager built in one day for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.
      • API Resume · Oct 2023: My resume as a REST API: Postman-only, rate-limited, with a joke for anyone who POSTs.
      • Ride Home · Jun 2022: Mix subway sounds, chatter and lo-fi music into your own TTC ride-home ambience.
      • Summary.io · Jan 2022: Upload a lecture video and get an AI transcript to study from. Built at MacHacks 2.

Skills

1. Pinned

   1. Recruiter:

      What do you work with day to day?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Pinning this so it’s easy to find.

      Pinned message · Lucas’s toolkit

      Languages

      TypeScriptJavaScriptPythonJavaC#SQLHTML/CSSBash

      Frontend

      ReactReact NativeNext.jsViteMUITanStack Query

      Backend & data

      Node.jsExpress.NETFlaskPrismaPostgreSQLMongoDBAzure Cosmos DBFirebaseDynamoDBSwagger

      AI & agents

      Model Context Protocol (MCP)Claude Agent SDKClaude CodeCursor

      Testing & automation

      PlaywrightVitestJestSelenium

      Infra & tooling

      DockerGitGitHub ActionsGitLab CIVercelAWS (Lambda, S3)Auth0Azure DevOps

      And the degree: B.Eng., Software Engineering (Co-op), McMaster University (2020–2025).

      👍

Contact

1. Let’s talk

   1. Recruiter:

      This has been great. Can we talk?

      Read

   2. LC

      Lucas Chen

      Absolutely, let’s talk! I’m Lucas, a software engineer at Zynga AdTech in Toronto.

      Reach me here

      Résumé →LinkedIn →GitHub →

      The résumé also comes as a one-page PDF.

      ❤️

   3. Recruiter:

      Perfect, talk soon.

      Read

End of conversation