Summary
Paul Lucas is a seasoned Director of Engineering and retired principal software engineer with 26+ years building high-performance back-end systems for companies from Bell Labs to Splunk and startups in the Bay Area. He combines deep systems programming expertise in C/C++ and Python with practical experience in compilers, finite state automata, distributed storage caching, and build-toolchain optimization—work that yielded multiple patents and a production FSM compiler/runtime used at Philips, Qualcomm, and CERN. A pragmatic architect and technical educator, he has chaired language committees, authored C++ guidelines and textbooks, and taught in-house courses while dramatically cutting build times and improving code quality. Now advising and doing hands-on Python hacking at a stealth startup, he’s also open to teaching computer science at the community-college level, reflecting a long-standing interest in mentoring and technical writing. An uncommon detail: he still maintains a production-grade finite state automata system (CHSM) that powers complex real-time reactive environments.
26 years of coding experience
33 years of employment as a software developer
B.S. Computer Science, B.S. Computer Science at New York University - Polytechnic School of Engineering
M.S. Computer Science, M.S. Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign