A1IntroArcade

Player 1 · Software Engineer

Lucas Chen

Class
Software Engineer
Guild
Zynga · AdTech
Base
Toronto, Canada

Software engineer building AI tooling and ad tech at Zynga.

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Experience

ZyngaSoftware EngineerMay 2025 – Present

Zynga

Software Engineer

Kind
Work
Dates
May 2025 – Present
Where
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.
HexagonFull Stack Engineering InternMay 2023 – Jun 2024

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence

Full Stack Engineering Intern

Kind
Internship
Dates
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.
  • 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.
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Express
  • C#
  • .NET
  • Azure Cosmos DB
  • Playwright
McMaster TATeaching AssistantSep 2022 – Apr 2023

McMaster University

Teaching Assistant

Kind
Teaching
Dates
Sep 2022 – Apr 2023
Where
Hamilton, ON
  • 1P13 Integrated Engineering Project (Sep–Dec 2022).
  • 2GA3 Computer Architecture (Jan–Apr 2023).
Exchange SolutionsSoftware Engineering InternMay 2022 – Aug 2022

Exchange Solutions

Software Engineering Intern

Kind
Internship
Dates
May 2022 – Aug 2022

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 Lambda
  • JavaScript
  • Next.js
  • D3.js
  • Snowflake
  • 8th Wall WebAR
  • Shopify API
McMaster AI SocietyAI Research MemberOct 2021 – 2022

McMaster Artificial Intelligence Society

AI Research Member

Kind
Research
Dates
Oct 2021 – 2022
Where
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
InsideDeskSoftware Engineering InternJun 2021 – Sep 2021

InsideDesk

Software Engineering Intern

Kind
Internship
Dates
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.
  • Wrote automated end-to-end UI tests with Selenium and Python, cutting manual QA testing by 40%.
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • Selenium
  • Slack

6 items · newest first

02 Impact · Zynga AdTech

By the numbers

LiveOps agentTime to complete one LiveOps workflow

Time to complete one LiveOps workflow: from 2–3 h to ~20 min.

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

  1. 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.

    • AI
    • MCP
    • AdTech
    • Leadership
  2. LiveOps agent

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

    • AI agents
    • LiveOps
    • Automation
  3. High-value ads

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

    • AdTech
    • Leadership
  • 6Roles, from QA intern to software engineer
  • 10Projects built outside work
  • 3Hackathon builds
  • 2021First role in software

03 Projects · 10 titles

Now showing

  1. Feature Nº 01/05ToolAug 2026 – present

    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.

    Role
    Solo: spec, design and CLI (in progress)
    Stack
    TypeScript / Node.js / JSON Schema (Ajv) / Commander / YAML
  2. Feature Nº 02/05Product2023 – present

    TennisBooker

    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.

    Role
    Solo, full-stack (2023 version with help from Douglas Chen)
    Stack
    TypeScript / Playwright / React / Express / PostgreSQL
  3. Feature Nº 03/05ProductNov – Dec 2024

    PlatefulAI

    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.

    Role
    Team of 5: app shell, Auth0 login, meal-planning flow, deploy
    Stack
    React / Vite / MUI / Auth0 / Chart.js
  4. Feature Nº 04/05ProductMar – Apr 2023

    CarpoolX

    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.

    Role
    Team of 4: repo lead, most of the Flask backend and auth, core screens
    Stack
    React Native / Python / Flask / Firebase / Google Maps Platform
  5. Feature Nº 05/05HackathonJan 2022

    Rest Day

    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.

    Role
    Team of 2: Fitbit API integration, landing page, deploy
    Stack
    React / Fitbit Web API / styled-components / Node.js / Figma
    Award
    2nd place, “To Work or Not To Workout” sponsor challenge (AI Endurance), DeltaHacks 8

Also showing

  1. StudySpot

    Product · Nov 2024

    Find a place to study at McMaster: search, filters, ratings, favourites and a map.

    Live demo

  2. UnPassword

    Hackathon · Nov 2024

    A password manager built in one day for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.

    GitHub

  3. API Resume

    Experiment · Oct 2023

    My resume as a REST API: Postman-only, rate-limited, with a joke for anyone who POSTs.

    Case study GitHub

  4. Ride Home

    Experiment · Jun 2022

    Mix subway sounds, chatter and lo-fi music into your own TTC ride-home ambience.

    Live

  5. Summary.io

    Hackathon · Jan 2022

    Upload a lecture video and get an AI transcript to study from. Built at MacHacks 2.

    Devpost

Sheppard–YongeNorthbound

Skills

Network map · 6 lines · 41 stationsNext station Finch · Contact

  1. Languages

    1. TypeScript
    2. JavaScript
    3. Python
    4. Java
    5. C#
    6. SQL
    7. HTML/CSS
    8. Bash
  2. Frontend

    1. React
    2. React Native
    3. Next.js
    4. Vite
    5. MUI
    6. TanStack Query
  3. Backend & data

    1. Node.js
    2. Express
    3. .NET
    4. Flask
    5. Prisma
    6. PostgreSQL
    7. MongoDB
    8. Azure Cosmos DB
    9. Firebase
    10. DynamoDB
    11. Swagger
  4. AI & agents

    1. Model Context Protocol (MCP)
    2. Claude Agent SDK
    3. Claude Code
    4. Cursor
  5. Testing & automation

    1. Playwright
    2. Vitest
    3. Jest
    4. Selenium
  6. Infra & tooling

    1. Docker
    2. Git
    3. GitHub Actions
    4. GitLab CI
    5. Vercel
    6. AWS (Lambda, S3)
    7. Auth0
    8. Azure DevOps

Depot · where the lines began

McMaster University

B.Eng., Software Engineering (Co-op) · 2020 – 2025

Dean's Honour List (2020–2023) · McMaster Honour Award (2020–2023) · Courses: System Design, Data Structures and Algorithms, OOP, Software Design, Databases

FinchTerminal station

End of the line

This train terminates here. Thanks for riding. Please take your belongings, and transfer below to get in touch.

↺ Ride again from Sheppard–Yonge

Why this portfolio?

The Mixtape edition (Arcade, Desktop OS, Kinetic poster and Line 1 (TTC map)): the same facts as every other version, in a different shape.

How each section of this page is drawn
IntroArcade title · in Arcade
ExperienceFile browser · in Desktop OS
ImpactBig numbers · in Kinetic poster
ProjectsFeature posters · in Kinetic poster
SkillsNetwork map · in Line 1 (TTC map)
ContactEnd of the line · in Line 1 (TTC map)

Midnight palette · Grotesk type · Subtle motion

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