Ray Wilkerson · Fort Payne, Alabama · US Navy Veteran
Cloud, infrastructure, and security architect. Co-inventor of AGE, a patent-pending governance engine that makes AI agents prove their work. I have spent a career making enterprise technology something leadership can put its name to. Now I do the same for AI.
I served ten years in the US Navy, ending as shop supervisor over a shipboard data center, where every piece of equipment carried a maintenance schedule, a service record, and a technician's signature. That standard never left me: systems should be maintained, documented, and verified, and someone should be accountable for each of those words.
Since then I have carried that standard through three decades and as many industries. I built a managed services firm from a solo practice into a nine-person team serving thirty-plus contract customers, from hedge funds to defense contractors. I led a 15,000-user government migration to the Microsoft cloud and delivered it months ahead of schedule. I guided a biotech firm from 16 employees to nearly 250, architecting its security, compliance, and cloud estate along the way, through CMMC certification and NIST 800-171, until the company's successful sale in 2026.
Today, alongside continuing architecture and compliance work through The Local Pond, I am the co-founder and technical architect of BraveOn, where my partner and I built a patent-pending engine that brings the same discipline to AI: no agent's work ships until it survives independent review, with evidence to prove it.
Design and implementation of gated AI delivery pipelines: independent review of agent work, separation of duties, tamper-evident evidence, and usage metering, so AI output is auditable before it ships.
Azure and M365 estates designed and operated end to end: Kubernetes, identity and Conditional Access, SIEM and SOAR, private networking, and the incident response programs that stand behind them.
CMMC, NIST 800-53 and 800-171, SOC, ISO 27001, and international privacy law, delivered as working programs with policies, evidence, and audit readiness, not binders on a shelf.
LLMOps and AI governance courses for enterprise cohorts, delivered on dedicated cloud lab infrastructure, with BraveOn vLabs hosted across Azure, AWS, VMware, and GCP.
With my co-founder, I built AGE (Agentic General Enhancement), a patent-pending governance and orchestration engine for AI runtimes. Every unit of agent work passes through independent, adversarial review gates before it ships, and every step leaves tamper-evident evidence. Capability without governance is risk; AGE makes agent work provable.
One recent 13-day production window:
~400 issues closed · 100+ full end-to-end gate chains · 20+ real defects caught pre-release · ~90% of context served from cache
The gates caught what confident agents missed: a cloud identity misconfiguration that exposed an entire subscription, security logic that failed open under attack, and a live exploit recipe headed for customer documentation. All stopped before release.
Explore BraveOnAI governance consultancy. Co-inventor of the patent-pending AGE engine; architect of a 100+ role multi-agent production fleet. Enterprise LLMOps training and vLab delivery with partner DarkGravitas Inc.
15,000-user government migration to Teams and Exchange Online on GCC, delivered months early during a simultaneous two-tenant split. Long-term architect for a regulated biotech through its growth from 16 to nearly 250 employees, CMMC L1 and L2 certification, and production Azure and Kubernetes operations, through the company's sale in 2026. Virtual CTO for a biotech preparing a UK stock exchange listing.
Grew a solo practice into a nine-person managed services firm serving 30+ contract customers across finance, biotech, semiconductor, government, and defense, with a 3,000-script automation platform and seven years of volunteer IT for the EvoNexus startup incubator.
Design through implementation of identity, networking, storage, telephony, and security systems for customers from 5 to 30,000 employees, coast to coast.
Shop supervisor for the shipboard data center and micro-miniature repair shop; multiple Persian Gulf deployments aboard USS John Young (DD-973). Two Navy Achievement Medals; nearly $1M saved through component-level repair. Formerly held Secret NOFORN clearance.
Ray quickly proved dependable, knowledgeable, and trustworthy through action. His responsiveness, technical expertise, sensitivity to company needs, and willingness to share knowledge make him an extremely valuable asset.
Geoffrey Singer · Director of IT, Relational InvestorsAfter 10 years collaborating on over 100 projects, I know Ray as a determined problem-solver who takes initiative, managing projects independently with minimal direction. His reliability and ability to master new technologies make him invaluable.
Dan Royer · Director of IT, GenomaticaI am continually amazed at his breadth of knowledge, his unrelenting focus on customer satisfaction, and his ability to create opportunity and synergies with clients. Any client would be well served by engaging his services.
Bob Arsenault · Principal Systems Engineer, Creative Artists AgencyRay is a top-notch engineer with excellent customer skills. He was our engineer for difficult technical problems. He always found root causes and provided customer satisfaction.
Greg Ladwig · CISSP, MBA · Cyber Security Practice ManagerWhether the question is cloud architecture, a compliance program, or how to put AI agents to work without losing control of the results, the first step is thirty minutes on a calendar.
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