Now
Software EngineerZynga
May 2025 – Present · AdTech team: AI tooling and ad projects.
The AI tooling issueFall 2026 · No. 1025
ExclusiveHow one engineer turned a2–3-hour taskinto about 20 minutesInside Zynga’s AdTechTwo projects he designed and ledTested: 10 side projectsAgent Platform, TennisBooker & moreThe KitTypeScript, React, Node.js…Plus the résumé, free inside
Class of2025McMaster
Lucas ChenSoftware Engineer · Zynga AdTech · Toronto
The Profile Feature · p. 16
Six roles, five years, one engineer
From InsideDesk in 2021 to Zynga’s AdTech today: the career of Lucas Chen, newest first.
Words by Lucas Chen · Toronto, ON
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.
I automate things I'd rather not do by hand.
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.
The résumé, abridgedBefore Zynga
Internship
Full Stack Engineering InternHexagon
May 2023 – Jun 2024
- 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.
Teaching
Teaching AssistantMcMaster TA
Sep 2022 – Apr 2023
- 1P13 Integrated Engineering Project (Sep–Dec 2022).
- 2GA3 Computer Architecture (Jan–Apr 2023).
Internship
Software Engineering InternExchange Solutions
May 2022 – Aug 2022
- 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.
Research
AI Research MemberMcMaster AI Society
Oct 2021 – 2022
- 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.
Internship
Software Engineering InternInsideDesk
Jun 2021 – Sep 2021
- 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.
Lucas’s career, newest first.
By the Numbers Infographic · p. 30
By the numbers
Three results from Zynga AdTech, charted. Only the numbers Lucas can share; nothing estimated.
LiveOps agentTime to complete one LiveOps workflow
Before2–3 h
Now~20 min
With Lucas Chen · AI agents · LiveOps · Automation
I worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.
- 2projects designed and led by Lucas
- 2025joined Zynga AdTech (May)
- 3headline results in this issue
Ad-config MCP
Designed and led by Lucas Chen
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.
High-value ads
Designed and led by Lucas Chen
I designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.
Tested Reviews · p. 44
Tested.
Side projects, reviewed like new gear: shot on the studio sweep, with a verdict and a spec box. No stars, just what was built.
Tested · Tooling
Agent Platform
Verdict 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.
What it does
- Wrote the v3 spec: missions, workflow templates, task and role contracts, review gates, model routing, memory and fleet security.
- Built the “agent” control-plane CLI in TypeScript: it scaffolds a target repo, validates artifacts against JSON Schemas and runs the claim → start → submit → gate loop.
- Workers never certify their own work: a task passes only with an evidence bundle, independent verification, and spec, quality and architecture review.
- Routes each task by risk to a capability tier (frontier, strong, mid, cheap), mapped to models by policy instead of hard-coded vendors.
- Type
- Tooling
- Year
- Aug 2026 – present
- Role
- Solo: spec, design and CLI (in progress)
- Built with
- TypeScript, Node.js, JSON Schema (Ajv), Commander, YAML
Product · 2023 – present
TennisBooker
Verdict 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.
- Type
- Product
- Year
- 2023 – present
- Role
- Solo, full-stack (2023 version with help from Douglas Chen)
- Built with
- TypeScript, Playwright, React, Express
Product · Nov – Dec 2024
PlatefulAI
Verdict 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.
- Type
- Product
- Year
- Nov – Dec 2024
- Role
- Team of 5: app shell, Auth0 login, meal-planning flow, deploy
- Built with
- React, Vite, MUI, Auth0
Product · Mar – Apr 2023
CarpoolX
Verdict 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.
- Type
- Product
- Year
- Mar – Apr 2023
- Role
- Team of 4: repo lead, most of the Flask backend and auth, core screens
- Built with
- React Native, Python, Flask, Firebase
Hackathon build · Jan 2022
Rest Day
Verdict 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.
- Type
- Hackathon build
- Year
- Jan 2022
- Role
- Team of 2: Fitbit API integration, landing page, deploy
- Built with
- React, Fitbit Web API, styled-components, Node.js
- Award
- 2nd place, “To Work or Not To Workout” sponsor challenge (AI Endurance), DeltaHacks 8
Also tested5 more from the workbench
Product · 2024
StudySpot
Find a place to study at McMaster: search, filters, ratings, favourites and a map.
React · Vite · Leaflet · React Router
Hackathon build · 2024
UnPassword
A password manager built in one day for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.
React · TypeScript · Vite · Ant Design
Experiment · 2023
API Resume
My resume as a REST API: Postman-only, rate-limited, with a joke for anyone who POSTs.
Node.js · Express · MongoDB · Mongoose
Experiment · 2022
Ride Home
Mix subway sounds, chatter and lo-fi music into your own TTC ride-home ambience.
React · Sass · MUI · AWS S3
Hackathon build · 2022
Summary.io
Upload a lecture video and get an AI transcript to study from. Built at MacHacks 2.
React · AssemblyAI · Node.js · Express
The Kit Gear guide · p. 58
The Kit
What’s in the bag: the languages, frameworks and tools Lucas reaches for, and the degree that started it.
Languages
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Python
- Java
- C#
- SQL
- HTML/CSS
- Bash
Frontend
- React
- React Native
- Next.js
- Vite
- MUI
- TanStack Query
Backend & data
- Node.js
- Express
- .NET
- Flask
- Prisma
- PostgreSQL
- MongoDB
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Firebase
- DynamoDB
- Swagger
AI & agents
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Claude Agent SDK
- Claude Code
- Cursor
Testing & automation
- Playwright
- Vitest
- Jest
- Selenium
Infra & tooling
- Docker
- Git
- GitHub Actions
- GitLab CI
- Vercel
- AWS (Lambda, S3)
- Auth0
- Azure DevOps
Also in the bag
B.Eng., Software Engineering (Co-op)
McMaster University · 2020–2025
- Dean's Honour List (2020–2023)
- McMaster Honour Award (2020–2023)
- Courses: System Design, Data Structures and Algorithms, OOP, Software Design, Databases
Back cover
Don’t miss the next issue.
Lucas Chen is a software engineer on Zynga AdTech in Toronto. Roles, hard problems and good conversations welcome: pick an option on the card.
Lustre · Engineering, craft & the people who ship