Lucas Chen
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  • Nº968
  • RoleSoftware Engineer
  • Now atZynga · AdTech
  • BasedToronto, Canada

Lucas Chen

Software engineer building AI tooling and ad tech at Zynga.

See the work LinkedIn Résumé

01 Experience

Starring

Lucas Chen, in order of appearance · 2021–now

  1. 01May 2025 – Present

    as Software Engineer

    Zynga · Toronto, ON · Full-time

    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. 02May 2023 – Jun 2024

    as Full Stack Engineering Intern

    Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence · Internship

    • 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.

  3. 03Sep 2022 – Apr 2023

    as Teaching Assistant

    McMaster University · Hamilton, ON · Teaching

    • 1P13 Integrated Engineering Project (Sep–Dec 2022).
    • 2GA3 Computer Architecture (Jan–Apr 2023).

  4. 04May 2022 – Aug 2022

    as Software Engineering Intern

    Exchange Solutions · Internship

    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%.

  5. 05Oct 2021 – 2022

    as AI Research Member

    McMaster Artificial Intelligence Society · Hamilton, ON · Research

    • 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.

  6. 06Jun 2021 – Sep 2021

    as Software Engineering Intern

    InsideDesk · Internship

    • 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%.

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

    Case study GitHub

  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

    Case study GitHub (2023 version)

  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

    Case study Live demo

  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

    Case study GitHub

  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

    Case study Devpost GitHub

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

04 Skills · Specimen

Set in TypeScript

ALanguages8 styles
TypeScriptJavaScriptPythonJavaC#SQLHTML/CSSBash
BFrontend6 styles
ReactReact NativeNext.jsViteMUITanStack Query
CBackend & data11 styles
Node.jsExpress.NETFlaskPrismaPostgreSQLMongoDBAzure Cosmos DBFirebaseDynamoDBSwagger
DAI & agents4 styles
Model Context Protocol (MCP)Claude Agent SDKClaude CodeCursor
ETesting & automation4 styles
PlaywrightVitestJestSelenium
FInfra & tooling8 styles
DockerGitGitHub ActionsGitLab CIVercelAWS (Lambda, S3)Auth0Azure DevOps

Colophon · Education

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

05 · ContactThe endToronto, Canada

Say hello.

Lucas Chen · Software Engineer, Zynga · Thanks for watching

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