# Lucian Masalar > Principal Software Engineer GenAI Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/lucianmasalar Update 2023: working on Generative AI; currently leading the Code Assistant track for Generative AI adoption in the Developer Experience org in Walmart and Sam's Club. Broad-spectrum technologist with twenty plus years software experience in large financial institutions, e-commerce, small and medium-size startups. For the past 9+ years I’ve been doing mobile cross-platform react-native development. Before that I’ve done native mobile development, architecture and management for iOS for six years. Before that, I was involved in large data processing systems, data warehousing, massively parallel processing systems. I'm equally comfortable in IC, Architect or manager positions. I thrive on influencing people without controlling them, learning from my peers and teaching them what I know in exchange. I thrive on shipping good quality product in cadence. I tend to choose simple solutions before over- engineered ones, return on investment before technological coolness. ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer Generative AI @ Walmart Global Tech Jan 2022 – Present | Palo Alto, California, United States ### Mobile Engineer React Native @ Point Card Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 ### Mobile Engineer React Native @ Coupa Software Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 ### Sr. Staff Software Engineer - Mobile React Native @ InVision Jan 2017 – Jan 2020 | Palo Alto CA ### Mobile Architect @ GoDaddy.com Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | Sunnyvale CA Bringing 'Flare' with love, to a phone near you 😃 React Native greenfield project Part of a 4 developer team (Emerging Products) designing and developing the Flare mobile app * iOS : http://x.co/Flare, * Android : http://x.co/FlareAndr Written entirely in react-native with GraphQL in the backend. The app was featured on both the AppStore and GooglePlay. ### Director of Client Engineering @ CloudOn Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Palo Alto CA • iOS development for both the iPhone and iPad versions of the CloudOn productivity app. Introduced external 3rd party products like Crashlytics, Flurry, AppHance, BitYota, Calabash. Integrated the corresponding SDK's into the CloudOn iOS product. Wrote utility classes and categories. • Managed 3 Client Development teams: iOS, Android, Mobile Web + Desktop Web • Expanded the product from iPad-only to iPhone, iPad Mini, Android tablets, Android phones, Mac Safari. The CloudOn app climbed up to number 1 in Productivity in several countries and consistently appeared in lists of top business apps for mobile. App's Magazine selected CloudOn as the Best Free App for 2012. • Immediately after joining, I migrated the entire engineering organization from an old FogBugz/Mercurial environment to JIRA/Git/Bitbucket, a 2-year history of issues, wiki pages and code commits. • Created the Software Development Lifecycle covering topics like source control, Git branching, release management, Agile/SCRUM. Built a team of mobile developers/team leads in the US office. • Introduced an overseas contracting company for mobile development, managed the entire process of onboarding and integration with the US team. • Managed the interaction between the Client Development Team, Product and Ui/Ux Design. Managed a complex project management environment, spanning across 3 geographies, with lots of variables constantly changing from one release to another. • Participated in all architecture decisions for the mobile products and the defining of the Ui/Ux. • Started learning Android development using IntelliJ Idea. Skills / Technologies: iOS Ecosystem, Android Ecosystem, Dev Management, Project Management, Objective-C, OO Design Patterns, Xcode, AppCode, IntelliJ, Enyo, Mac OS X ### Director of Mobile @ Jiff, Inc. Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Palo Alto • iOS development (iPad). Part of the team of 4 developers re-writing a legacy iPad app (JiffPad) written by a series of contractors who came and went leaving behind an Objective-C hairball. Added AirBrake based exception handling, Mixpanel tracking, advance logging based on Cocoa Lumberjack, instrumented the code with macros to avoid common culprits (e.g insertObject:nil), boiler plate code (singleton init), introducing block-based constructs where appropriate. Transition from a hodge-podge of network calls to using RestKit with CoreData, connecting to the Ruby on Rails backend seamlessly via direct resource and object mapping. Designing and architecting the new component-based Jiff platform – a new way for the doctors, nurses to communicate to patients and their loved ones. • Managed a team of 3 iOS developers, including Agile / SCRUM project management Skills / Technologies: iOS Ecosystem, Objective-C, Xcode, AppCode, Instruments, Unix, Mac OS X, mobile s/w dev. Management, agile / SCRUM ### Software Architect, Mobile @ iSwifter Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Menlo Park • iOS development (iPad). Wrote the Rover iPad app together with one other developer. Acted as project manager for both client and back-end, introduced SCRUM/agile to the team. Delivered the product from soup to nuts in 5 weeks, including building a brand new team from ground up. (Top 50 Edu Apps in the US and UK App Store) • Designed and coded phase 1 of the “Virtual Data Center” – an automatic build system capable of creating a complete cloud server stack from source control and deploying it onto different cloud providers platforms (Amazon AWS, BlueBox Grid). Skills / Technologies: iOS Ecosystem, Objective-C, OO Design Patterns, Xcode, AppCode, Instruments, node.js, Ruby, Rake, Vlad, Capistrano, Unix, Mac OS X ### Principal Architect, Mobile @ eBay Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 ### Mobile Software Architect @ eBay Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 ----------- FAST COMPANY just ranked eBay #2 most innovative company in mobile, #22 overall world wide http://tinyurl.com/4pecpx8 "The new eBay is mobile, mainstream, and fashionable." ----------- - Designed and implemented the "See It On" feature in the eBay Fashion iPhone app. It constituted a first in the industry - a "markerless augmented reality scenario" running on an iPhone. The feature uses the front camera and allows the user to virtually try on sunglasses. This involved some complex integration of the Objective-C code with a Lua interpreter and an Ogre 3D graphics rendering engine (based on technology from Total Immersion). ------- "What was the coolest new app shown at CES? I vote for eBay's augmented reality app" ~ Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) | 1/9/11 10:37 PM ------- - Part of the 3 developers team building the eBay Motors iPhone app. - Took over the code and did the first integration of Red Laser, bar-code scanning after the acquisition of the Occipital company by eBay. - Wrote various Python, shell scripts for converting .csv input data files to binary .plist's, automatically identifying and removing unused resources in an iPhone app bundle, fixing hi-res images. - Revamped the tracking system for all iPhone apps - using both an in-house solution and external providers (Flurry, Google Analytics, Mobclix) - Participated in the architecture sessions defining the services and aggregation layer for all mobile platforms Android, iOS, Win Phone 7, mobile web. Technologies : iOS ecosystem, Objective-C, OO Design Patterns, Xcode, Instruments, Python, Unix, MacOS X, Cappuccino Objective-J ### Manager, Mobile Software Development @ eBay Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 --------- eBay Mobile Sales almost $2Bil in 2010 http://tinyurl.com/4c2nws7 --------- - built the first eBay in-house Mobile development team for iOS products. - managed a team of 6 iOS developers. - selected, installed and configured the central tool used for the entire eBay Mobile organization for issue tracking, source control, wiki documentation, code reviews, builds, using a hosted cloud-based solution from Atlassian. - worked on the original methodologies and techniques for iOS product development (SCRUM based). Obtained the SCRUM Master Certification. - on-boarded an overseas consulting company for iOS QA and development (infosec, legal, procurement). Subsequently managed the on-going relationship with that company. - represented the eBay Mobile organization in 3rd party information security audits for iOS and Android. - worked with Paypal on integrating some new features in the eBay core iPhone app like : immediate payments and frictionless payment flow. Technologies : iOS ecosystem, Xcode, Instruments, Python, Unix, MacOS X, management ### Staff Application Architect @ eBay Jan 2006 – Jan 2009 - Designed and implemented the loading infrastructure of the "Singularity" project. Several hundred servers in an Massively Parallel Processing scheme, collecting un-structured data from 4 different geo locations, parsing and inserting it into one of the largest "appliance" based distributed database in the world (Python, shell, SQL, SQLite, Greenplum, Postgres) - Designed and implemented the first incarnation of the AaaS (Analytics as a Service) consisting of Web-based interfaces and SOA services, allowing data analysts to use a web interface to create sandbox environments and upload analytics data into the DW. (Perl, Python, Javascript, shell, XML, XHTML, JSON, SQL). - Designed and built various utilities for database monitoring, integrity checking, cross platform database data and metadata diff (Oracle vs. Teradata) (Java, SQL) - Installed, configured and maintained several knowledge base and forum systems (Drupal, Plone) - Provided leadership and guidance for programmers and junior architects for Python, Java, Shell, Perl, SQL, development methodologies, DW theory and best practices, OO and design patterns, source control and release management. - Managed several large-scale software architecture projects. (data modeling, ETL best practices). ### Sr. Application Architect @ eBay Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 - Designed and built the Seller Reports project, which uses the DW data to aggregate activity summary data for all eBay’s storefronts and sends them their monthly report in both HTML and Excel format (direct end-user automated emailing). - Designed and built the Merchandising Engine project, which computes item recommendations based on past bidding activity and popular searches. Technologies : Perl, Unix shell scripting, Java, SQL, HTML, Javascript ### Application Architect @ eBay Jan 2004 – Jan 2005 - Designed and implemented the Source Control and Release Management infrastructure for the DW team (incremental releases, parallel development, multi-site). (Clearcase, Unix shell scripting, Perl) - Designed and built various utilities for database monitoring, integrity checking, etc. (Perl, Python, Unix shell, Java). - Coordinated the software application side of a major data center colo migration of several hundred servers to a different geographical location, with 0 downtime upon switchover. (50+ hours non-stop at the keyboard + coffee, coffee, coffee :). For the first time "What doesn't break you makes you stronger" took a whole new meaning for me. ### Sr. Software Engineer @ eBay Jan 2002 – Jan 2004 - Designed and built the first generation ETL infrastructure for the eBay Data Warehouse (>2 billion records processed every night). (Perl, Unix shell, Informatica, Oracle, Teradata) - Designed and built the Data Licensing Platform which is used for packaging and selling raw data from the DW to 3rd parties (multi-million dollar direct revenue). (Perl, Unix shell, SQL) - Designed and built the Monthly Reconciliation process (reconciling between the Oracle OLTP sources on the site and the Teradata DW). (Perl, Unix shell, SQL) ### Sr. Software Engineer @ Gill Trading San Francisco Jan 2002 – Jan 2002 ### Sr. Software Engineer @ Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, San Francisco CA Jan 2000 – Jan 2002 ### Software Architect @ Star Data Systems, Toronto, Canada Jan 2000 – Jan 2000 ### Sr. Software Engineer @ Royal Bank of Canada, Capital Markets Jan 1999 – Jan 2000 ### Sr. Application Architect @ Bell Mobility Jan 1999 – Jan 1999 ### Sr. Application Architect @ Bank of Montreal, Treasury Dept. Jan 1996 – Jan 1998 ### Sr. Programmer @ Citi Group, Global Derivatives Dept., New York NY Jan 1994 – Jan 1996 ### Programmer / Analyst @ Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation Jan 1992 – Jan 1994 ### Programmer / Analyst @ CIBC - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce - Wood Gundy Fixed Income Trading Jan 1992 – Jan 1992 ## Education ### Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering Technical University of Cluj Napoca ### SOA Certification in Service Oriented Architecture SOA Institute San Francisco ### Teradata Certified Master in Teradata NCR Teradata Certification ### Financial Broker in Financial Trading and Derivatives Canadian Securities Institute ### C++ Proficiency in C++ Citi New York ### - in European Financial Derivatives CAF Brussels, Belgium ### Certificate in Artificial Intelligence IBM ### Certificate in Generative AI with Large Language Models Deeplearning.ai ### ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers deeplearning.ai ### Introduction to Generative AI for Software Development in Computer Software Engineering deeplearning.ai ### Team Software Engineering with AI in Computer Software Engineering deeplearning.ai ### AI-Powered Software and System Design in Computer Software Engineering deeplearning.ai ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/luc-masalar - Portfolio: https://walmart.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/lucianmasalar JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/lucianmasalar/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12