Ryan Booth

Twenty-five years ago I started my career pulling cable in a server room. Today I build AI systems that run in production for companies that can't afford to get it wrong.

In between, I spent two decades doing the hard infrastructure work — networks, automation, cloud platforms — at companies ranging from a regional bank to a venture-backed startup to Juniper Networks. I was employee #49 at Apstra, where I built CloudLabs from a handful of Ansible scripts into a globally distributed platform that onboarded Juniper's entire sales and support organization after acquisition. I earned my CCIE in 2015. I've led engineering teams, shipped open source tools still in use today, and presented to Fortune 500 executives and developer communities alike.

When AI started becoming a real engineering discipline — not just a demo — I leaned in hard. I've built production agents, LangGraph workflow systems, RAG pipelines, and multi-model architectures. I built an entire SaaS product through AI-assisted development before "agentic AI" was a term. Then I did it again, harder, in an unfamiliar language (Rust), to prove the methodology held under real conditions. It did.

Now I run Blue Ridge Systems — an AI systems consulting firm I founded to help organizations build things that actually work. Not demos. Not proofs of concept. Systems that handle real workloads and don't fall apart when requirements change.

I'm based in Canyon, Texas, which is about as far from Silicon Valley as you can get. I think that's an asset. I care about solving real problems for real people, not optimizing for buzz.

Outside the work, I paint. Abstract pieces, mostly — it's how I slow down and think differently. My art and creative identity live here at abstractryan.ai. My consulting work lives at brc-ai.net.

If you're building something with AI and want to talk through what it actually takes — or you just want to see what I've shipped — you're in the right place.