A Senior Software Engineer focused on backend systems, platforms, and developer infrastructure. I enjoy building reliable systems that power real products used by real people.
Most recently I was at Block (Square) working on backend systems for restaurants and merchant platforms, helping power the tools thousands of restaurants use every day. I like working at the intersection of distributed systems and product development, collaborating closely with product and design to ship systems that actually improve user experiences.
Once upon a time I was a networking researcher studying edge computing and multipath networking but these days I mostly write fullstack code and would describe myself as a sort of "Software Handyman". Give me an interesting problem and I'll get you a working solution in no time. I love to solve real problems that enable customers to have a great experience.
I enjoy building systems that live behind the scenes but quietly carry a lot of weight. Some things I’ve worked on:
- Commerce platforms supporting restaurant merchants and menu infrastructure
- Internal developer platforms used by hundreds of engineers
- API's and CLI's for internal deveoper tooling
- Secure infrastructure for secrets management and authentication
- Distributed systems and event-driven architectures
- Data pipelines and reporting systems
At Block I:
- Designed large-scale menu migration pipelines enabling adoption of a next-generation merchant platform
- Built Merchant Factory, an internal environment generation platform used by hundreds of engineers enabling better testing and reliability of our products
- Developed menu management APIs used across Square for Restaurants
- Built reporting infrastructure supporting merchant analytics and compliance workflows
These systems contributed to $300M+ in incremental GPV across restaurant merchants.
Kotlin • Go • Java • Node.js • Python • Ruby
AWS • Docker • Kubernetes • Terraform • HashiCorp Vault • Supabase
Distributed systems • Microservices • REST APIs • GraphQL • Event-driven systems • Kafka
When I'm not solving interesting problems at work in the payments/Restaurants space, I'm hard at work exploring how technology can change the social landscape and how we can make community better through technology.
Before Block I worked on:
Backend APIs and infrastructure for secure credential access built on HashiCorp Vault, supporting internal engineering platforms.
Cloud services and distributed device management systems for edge hardware.
- Adjunct faculty teaching Database Systems and Distributed Systems
- Published research on virtualization and networking performance
I’m the founder of the Seattle Social Club, a nonprofit community focused on helping people meet friends and partners offline. We're on a mission to solve loneliness one connection at a time!
- Hosted 60+ sold-out events
- Built internal tools for event operations and attendee networking
- Grew a community of thousands of members across Seattle
I also enjoy building small side projects that explore:
- social software
- developer tools
- systems experimentation
I'm currrently building out a social events platform for small community organizers that will enable connecting all parts of the community organizer ecosystem! Stay tuned for more details!
Since I work in computing, I like to escape from the keyboard as much as possible. I'm either playing pickleball, boardgames, biking, or paddling the nearest waterway.
- Performance Evaluation of Multi-Path TCP For Data Center and Cloud Workloads (ICPE 2019)
- Fast Transparent Virtual Machine Migration in Distributed Edge Clouds (ACM/IEEE SEC 2017)
- Containers and Virtual Machines at Scale: A Comparative Study (ACM Middleware 2016)
If you're building interesting systems or hiring backend engineers who enjoy diving deep into the details and solving problems:
📧 lucaschaufournier@gmail.com 📍 Seattle, WA
According to French Wikipedia, "The chaufournier is, in the production of quicklime , the worker driver of the lime kiln." In essence, its a lime burner.