lucas-chenSoftware Engineer @ Zynga
~/lucas-chen (main) $ cat README.md
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.
Outside work, I automate things I'd rather not do by hand. My longest-running side project started in 2023 as a Playwright script that booked my parents' tennis courts the moment booking opened; it's now a TypeScript monorepo with a web app, an API and a bot that runs every morning on a Raspberry Pi. 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 studied Software Engineering (Co-op) at McMaster University. Along the way I interned at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, Exchange Solutions and InsideDesk, was a teaching assistant for two engineering courses, and built projects at DeltaHacks, MacHacks and MEC.
$ git log --graph --decorate # newest first
b286e23(HEAD -> main, origin/main)
AdTech team: AI tooling and ad projects.
fb42b59(tag: v2023)
changed:TypeScriptReactExpressC#.NETAzure Cosmos DBPlaywright
f1d95eb(teaching/mcmaster-ta)
ab47a28(tag: v2022)
E-commerce and loyalty platforms: a Shopify app on AWS, plus AR, blockchain and data-visualization work.
changed:AWS LambdaJavaScriptNext.jsD3.jsSnowflake8th Wall WebARShopify API
80270e6(research/mcmaster-ai-society)
changed:C#Unity
53fd315(tag: v2021)
changed:JavaScriptPythonSeleniumSlack
$ git diff --stat before..after -- zynga/
3 files changed,4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
bench: time to complete one liveops workflow6–9× faster
$ ls -t projects/ # 10 repos, newest first
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.
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.
With Douglas Chen
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.
With Mohammad Mohsin Khan, Wajdan Faheem, Jasmine Sun-Hu, Hammad
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.
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.
With Willie Pai, Mohammad Mohsin Khan
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.
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.
With Henushan Bala, Rafeed Iqbal, Allison Cook
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.
With Quinn Ha
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.
With Douglas Chen, Aditya Bhadauriya, Fady Morcos
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.
With Willie Pai
$ cat package.json # skills + education
$ ./contact.sh
lucas@toronto ~/lucas-chen (main) $ ./contact.sh --list
Lucas Chen · Software Engineer @ Zynga (AdTech) · Toronto, Canada
# every command below is a link. Or type one.
The Terminal edition: the same facts as every other version, in a different shape.
| Intro | README.md |
|---|---|
| Experience | Git log |
| Impact | Impact diff |
| Projects | Repositories |
| Skills | package.json |
| Contact | Shell prompt |
Midnight palette · Terminal type · Kinetic motion
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