rm.

Technology leader. Builder at heart.

Ryan
McAdams.

I build teams that deliver
and systems that stay up.

SVP of Technology at OPENLANE. Founder of RunUO. Marine Corps veteran. I’m still happiest with a hard problem and something to build.

Explore my work Let’s connect
Ryan McAdams, smiling outdoors

My favorite feature
is uptime.

Based in IndianaAlways building
Enterprise scale.Open-source roots.Marine Corps discipline.One builder’s mindset.

01 / The through line

Big-picture leadership.
Hands-on by nature.

I can go deep with engineers on architecture in the morning and make the business case to a board in the afternoon.

For 25+ years, I’ve led teams and built enterprise platforms. My work spans technology strategy, M&A due diligence, post-acquisition integration, and platform modernization. Today, that work continues at OPENLANE.

My next chapter: the AI renaissance.

I’m approaching the AI renaissance as a builder. With RustUO, I’m directing parallel teams of AI coding agents, using architecture decision records, clear boundaries between crates, and testing to guide their work.

That hands-on work shapes my view of AI leadership: choose problems that matter, evaluate the results, and build a clear business case. The opportunity is to help engineering teams turn new capabilities into reliable systems and business value.

See what I’m building

Beyond the keyboard

  • Husband
  • Father
  • Mentor
  • Bengals fan
  • Baseball & softball coach
  • Church volunteer

02 / Building after hours

Same curiosity.
New worlds.

Two decades apart, these projects share the same obsession with multiplayer worlds, open source, and the systems that keep them alive.

In progress2026

RustUO_

A new foundation for an old world. RustUO is an Ultima Online server written from scratch in Rust, designed to run on a single deterministic simulation thread without pausing to save.

library crates
26
lines of Rust
~490k
Under the hood
  • Designed for approximately 5,000 concurrent players per shard, with an 8 ms simulation tick
  • No save pauses: continuous write-ahead logging and checkpoints, with at most one simulation tick lost in a crash
  • Game content scripted in Luau, with hot reloading and era rulesets selected at runtime
  • Hardened with 24-hour fuzzing campaigns, 1,000-cycle crash/restart tests, and deterministic simulated-disk testing
  • Built using parallel teams of AI coding agents, guided by architecture decision records and enforced crate layering
  • Rust
  • Luau
  • Tokio
  • Distributed systems
  • AI-native engineering
The open-source chapter2002

Founder / Open source

RunUO

I founded RunUO, an open-source Ultima Online server emulator, in 2002. Written in C#, it became the foundation for a generation of player-run shards. Its lineage lives on in community projects that still power shards today.

Give people the tools.
Let them build their worlds.
The foundation
  • Started the project and co-led it as an open-source community effort
  • A C#/.NET server for real-time multiplayer networking, written when that was still unusual
  • Scriptable content model that let shard operators build their own worlds
  • C#
  • .NET
  • Networking
  • Open source
The work continues.Follow along on GitHub

03 / The journey

Built on experience.
Grounded in service.

01

OPENLANE

formerly KAR Global · NYSE: OPLN

Current chapter

SVP of Technology

2023 – Present

Lead a technology organization of roughly 500 people across platform, infrastructure, and engineering for a digital used-vehicle marketplace.

Earlier roles

VP of Technology

2019 – 2023

Integrated acquired platforms (TradeRev, Autoniq, and DRIVIN), consolidated Salesforce, and built the enterprise data lake.

Director of Technology

2018 – 2019

Built infrastructure-as-code, SRE, and NOC practices across 100+ sites, rolled out SD-WAN, and owned SOX controls.

02

Interactive Intelligence

now Genesys

Head of Advanced Technology Group

2014 – 2018

Built the private cloud behind the contact-center-as-a-service platform, using OpenStack from 2014 and Kubernetes from 2015. Supported the platform through the $1.4B Genesys acquisition.

Earlier roles

Lead Solutions Engineer

2010 – 2014

Designed and delivered large-scale communications deployments. Received an Impact Award.

Technical Team Lead

2001 – 2008

Led technical teams supporting enterprise contact-center customers.

03

Pro OnCall Technologies

Hosted solutions & service operations

Director of Service Operations

2008 – 2010

Founded and ran the Hosted Solutions business unit.

04

United States Marine Corps Reserve

Dayton, OH

Infantry Rifleman

2000 – 2008

Served in Iraq in infantry and mortuary affairs roles. Earned two meritorious promotions.

Where I go deep

  • Technology strategy
  • Platform modernization
  • M&A due diligence
  • M&A integration
  • Cloud architecture
  • Kubernetes
  • OpenStack
  • Infrastructure as code
  • SRE & DevOps
  • Cybersecurity & SOX
  • AI strategy & governance
  • AI-assisted development
  • Data platforms
  • Rust
  • C#

04 / Keep the conversation going

Good things start
with a conversation.

Leadership opportunities, AI, or the next hard problem.
Let’s talk.

hello@ryanmcadams.com