Region I · The Keep
Character sheet
Software engineer building AI tooling and ad tech at Zynga.
I'm a software engineer on Zynga's AdTech team in Toronto. 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 quests completed, 1 active
Region II · Quest log
The log holds 6 quests, newest first: 1 active and 5 completed.
Zynga
Main quest · Active
Quest giver Zynga · Place Toronto, ON
May 2025 – Present
AdTech team: AI tooling and ad projects.
Hexagon
Internship · Completed
Quest giver Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
May 2023 – Jun 2024
McMaster TA
Teaching · Completed
Quest giver McMaster University · Place Hamilton, ON
Sep 2022 – Apr 2023
Exchange Solutions
Internship · Completed
Quest giver Exchange Solutions
May 2022 – Aug 2022
E-commerce and loyalty platforms: a Shopify app on AWS, plus AR, blockchain and data-visualization work.
McMaster AI Society
Research · Completed
Quest giver McMaster Artificial Intelligence Society · Place Hamilton, ON
Oct 2021 – 2022
InsideDesk
Internship · Completed
Quest giver InsideDesk
Jun 2021 – Sep 2021
Region III · Deeds
Three feats from the guild hall at Zynga AdTech, the ones worth a song. Told plainly, with only the numbers I can stand behind.
Deed I
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 & ledby Lucas
Deed II
Buff gained: Haste
2–3 h→~20 min
Time to complete one LiveOps workflow
I worked on an AI LiveOps agent that cut a workflow from 2–3 hours to about 20 minutes.
Deed III
I designed and led a project that helps games identify high-value ads.
Designed & ledby Lucas
Region IV · Inventory
Everything forged so far, all 10 items, rarest first. Each one is a real project.
Legendary Hackathon relic
“A workout planner that schedules rest days, not just workouts. Built at DeltaHacks 8.”
2nd place, “To Work or Not To Workout” sponsor challenge (AI Endurance), 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.
Rare Tool
“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.
Rare Product
“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.
Rare Product
“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.
Rare Product
“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.
Common Product
“Find a place to study at McMaster: search, filters, ratings, favourites and a map.”
A mobile-first prototype for finding study spots on McMaster’s campus: search and filter spots, save favourites, mark places visited, rate them, and see them on a map around you.
Common Hackathon relic
“A password manager built in one day for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.”
A password manager with Auth0 sign-in, an Express API, and passwords encrypted before they are stored in Firebase. I built it in one day with Willie Pai and Mohammad Mohsin Khan for the MEC 2024 programming challenge.
Common Experiment
“My resume as a REST API: Postman-only, rate-limited, with a joke for anyone who POSTs.”
An Express + MongoDB API that serves my resume as JSON, one section at a time or all at once. Inspired by Eric Lake’s API resume.
Common Experiment
“Mix subway sounds, chatter and lo-fi music into your own TTC ride-home ambience.”
A small ambient-sound web app inspired by ridethesubway: sliders blend subway ambience, background chatter and lo-fi music over a train illustration by the artist mienar.
Common Hackathon relic
“Upload a lecture video and get an AI transcript to study from. Built at MacHacks 2.”
A study tool for recorded lectures: upload a video, watch it beside an AssemblyAI speech-to-text transcript, and (the plan) drag snippets onto your slides to export as a PDF. In 36 hours our team of four built upload, playback and transcription.
Region V · Skill tree
The tree has 6 branches and 41 tools unlocked so far. A branch's bar shows how full it is next to the fullest one.
Software Engineerthe root of every branch
8 tools
6 tools
11 tools
4 tools
4 tools
8 tools
2020–2025
B.Eng., Software Engineering (Co-op)
Region VI · The Tavern
Pull up a chair. The notice board is where adventurers find one another: here is how to find me.
Adventurers wanted
Party leader Lucas Chen, software engineer of the Zynga AdTech guild, out of Toronto. Roles, hard problems and good conversations are all welcome at this table.
Signed, Lucas
The Quest edition: the same facts as every other version, in a different shape.
| Intro | Character sheet |
|---|---|
| Experience | Quest log |
| Impact | Legendary deeds |
| Projects | Inventory |
| Skills | Skill tree |
| Contact | Tavern notice board |
Paper palette · Press type · Subtle motion
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