Mercer Island, Washington

Jared Reimer

Lead AI Architect at the University of Washington @ Information Technology (UWIT). Former founder, CTO and startup CEO.

Three decades, three exits, three waves: early to the internet, then the cloud, now AI. Today I lead engineering and 24x7 operations for PURPLE, the University of Washington's signature AI platform, for 100,000+ amazing people across three campuses and UW Medicine.

Connect on LinkedIn See PURPLE at UW

Jared Reimer, seated in a white shirt in front of a brick wall, smiling at the camera.

30 yearsbuilding technology companies and platforms, always with a team
3 exitsplus a turnaround, none of them a solo act
100,000+people at UW with PURPLE in full production
1,200+AI agents the UW community built for itself, without writing code

Three waves

Every chapter has the same shape: 0 to 1, before a playbook exists.

The internet

1994 to 2005

I've been getting people online since my teens: first a BBS, then an ISP at 17. I rose to VP of Operations at oz.net, one of Seattle's first dial-up and DSL providers, and led its sale to The River.

At The River I architected the integration of the acquired ISPs into one system, then as interim CEO took the company through a turnaround to its sale to a public company.

In 2001 I helped found the Seattle Internet Exchange and was its first President. It made peering free and neutral, and it is now the world's largest free Internet exchange point.

30,000+ISP customers at The River
371networks on the SIX today
3.7 Tbpspeak SIX traffic

The cloud

2006 to 2024, and the start of the AI era

I founded Cascadeo in 2006 and was its CTO for nearly all eighteen years, and its CEO when it needed one. I set the direction from day one and ran the P&L for most of its life.

We grew to hundreds of people, almost all engineers, served 100+ organizations, earned a place in Gartner's Magic Quadrant three years running, and won Managed Services Provider of the Year.

We went where the talent was. Most of those jobs were in Manila and rural Legaspi, and building careers there was part of the mission from the start. I sold the company in 2020 and stayed three more years as CTO.

The AI era started here. In 2023 we were among the earliest users of AWS Bedrock, in its pre-release days, and built Cascadeo AI, the first MSP platform to put large language models into live operations and helpdesk ticketing. It led to invitations to speak at AWS re:Invent and the AWS Day One CxO Summit in Singapore, where for many people it was the first working use of LLMs they had seen beyond ChatGPT.

18 yearsas founder and CTO
100+organizations served
3 yearsrunning in Gartner's Magic Quadrant

AI

2023 to now

I brought that experience to the University. I am the first Lead AI Architect at UW Information Technology (UWIT), the central IT organization serving all three campuses and UW Medicine, and the primary architect of PURPLE, the University's generative AI platform.

PURPLE went from prototype to campus-wide production in under two years, on a fixed three-year budget, with UW data kept in a tenant the University controls. Its agents are built and refined with a team of staff and student assistants.

The point is to take toil off people's plates, not to replace anyone.

100,000+people with access
1,200+community-built agents
300 to 1,500AI Community of Practice members

Thirty years on one line

Three eras that overlap, three exits, one long thread of board service.

The eras overlap: the AI era began inside Cascadeo in 2023, a year before UWIT. Diamonds mark the three exits. Hover any bar for detail, click an era to jump to its story, or open the table below. On a phone, scroll the chart sideways.

View as a table

1994 to 2000	oz.net Internet Services. Systems administrator to VP of Operations. Sold to The River (exit 1).
1998, 2001	BS and MS in Computer Science, University of Washington.
2000 to 2005	The River Internet Access Co. VP Operations, interim CEO, then CTO. Sold to a public company (exit 2).
2001 to 2021	Seattle Internet Exchange. Founding board director, first President, then Technical Advisory Committee.
2006 to 2024	Cascadeo. Founder and CTO, and CEO when it needed one. Acquired in 2020 (exit 3).
2014 to 2015	HBO's "Silicon Valley," season 2. Senior technical advisor.
2023	Cascadeo AI. Among the earliest users of AWS Bedrock, pre-release; the first MSP to put large language models into live operations and helpdesk ticketing.
2024 to now	UW Information Technology. Lead AI Architect and primary architect of PURPLE.

PURPLE at UW

From prototype to campus-wide production in under two years.

PrototypeAn architecture recommendationA licensed core in a tenant UW controls, so University data stays under the University's own agreements.
500+Pilot testersStudents, faculty, researchers and staff across three campuses built hundreds of agents without writing code.
100,000+Campus-wide launchFull production in June and July 2026, free with a UW NetID, on a fixed three-year budget.
1,200+Community-built agentsAnd climbing, helped along by PURPLE Studio, an agent that builds agents.

How it is put together

The design thesis: AI is a new layer of intelligence over the systems an organization already runs. Put AI where people already work, and let the platform absorb the complexity.

People

Students, faculty, researchers and staff across three campuses, free with a UW NetID.

Pure PurplePurple HelpDeep Purple1,200+ community agents

Platform

PURPLE, with three system agents I set the mission for, plus PURPLE Studio, the agent that builds agents, and PURPLE Connect, which brings ServiceNow inside the platform.

PURPLE StudioPURPLE ConnectModel Context Protocol

Foundation

A licensed core running in a UWIT-controlled Azure tenant, so University data stays under the University's own agreements, serving production models from several frontier labs.

UW-controlled tenantAzure AI FoundryFixed three-year budget

In production

PURPLE Studio

An agent that builds other agents. I designed it and built it with Claude Code; the student assistants I work with test it and teach others to create with it. It is how a community with no programmers has built 1,200+ agents.

Alpha

PURPLE Connect

ServiceNow inside PURPLE. The University's service desk, reachable from the same place people already ask their questions. Architected by me and built the same way, with Claude Code.

How I work

Hire people better than you, then get out of their way.

The hardest lesson of thirty years, and it had nothing to do with technology.

My dream has not changed: take the infrastructure that matters and open it to everyone. The Seattle Internet Exchange did that for peering. Cascadeo did it for cloud-native architecture. PURPLE does it for agentic AI across an entire top-10 public research university.

I have always been a player-coach: set the direction, then build alongside the people doing the work. The part of the job I keep coming back to is translation, between the leadership table and the engineers who actually make the thing real. Both sides deserve to be understood.

I build nearly everything with generative AI as my collaborator and sidekick, and I believe Claude Code and Cowork are the most disruptive innovations since NCSA Mosaic.

Talks, press and the record

The record, as others tell it.

Every link here is someone else's page: the University, AWS, the press, HBO. The work was built so other people could succeed with it, so their accounts are the ones worth reading.

UW's announcement of the Lead AI Architect roleThe University's introduction of the newly created role and the mandate behind PURPLE.
PURPLE: AI for All at the University of WashingtonThe University's own guide to the platform, its privacy and its security commitments.
Architecting for AI in Higher EdPresented at Internet2 ITANA, January 2025.
The Unseen Forces Shaping Our Digital WorldLong-form interview on Ben Reinberg's I OWN IT podcast, December 2023.
AWS re:Invent 2022, session DOP205Build it & run it: Streamline your DevOps capabilities with machine learning.
Ride the wave: Three ways to navigate AI-driven staffing shiftsWritten for Fast Company as an Executive Board member, March 2024.
Gartner Magic Quadrant, three consecutive yearsPublic Cloud IT Transformation Services, 2021 through 2023.
Telemetry-based decisions on AWSCo-authored on the AWS Partner Network blog, February 2023.
Seattle Internet Exchange, 20th anniversary retrospectiveInvited talk at NANOG 70 on the history and future of the SIX.
Everything Is Compromised. Now What?Written for F5 Labs' CISO-to-CISO series.
HBO's "Silicon Valley"Senior technical advisor on the Emmy-winning series, season 2.
Crunchbase profileFounder profile.

Stages, press and clients

Where the work showed up.

Invited to speak

Industry and investor stages, as Cascadeo's founder and as UWIT's Lead AI Architect.

AWS re:Invent · AWS Day One CxO Summit, Singapore · Goldman Sachs, Warburg Pincus and KeyBanc Capital Markets investor forums · NANOG · ChefConf · infra/STRUCTURE Summit, Toronto · Notre Dame AI Forum · Internet2 ITANA

In the press

Interviews and bylines.

CNN · Enterprise Radio · Ben Reinberg's I OWN IT podcast · GeekWire · Fast Company Executive Board · F5 Labs · AWS Partner Network blog

Drove cloud transformation and operations with

Clients including, among the 100+ organizations Cascadeo served:

Nest · CenturyLink Cloud · GitHub · NetApp · Benefit Cosmetics · Zenoss

Three stories I still tell

Two from the client list, one from Hollywood.

Took nest.com live on launch day and ran its AWS backend before Google acquired Nest. Architected and operated CenturyLink Cloud's global monitoring across 20 data centers, billions of data points a day. And for season 2 of HBO's Emmy-winning comedy "Silicon Valley," served as the credited Senior Technical Advisor, keeping the show's technology honest.

What the Cascadeo team earned

Gartner Magic QuadrantPublic Cloud IT Transformation Services, three consecutive years, 2021 to 2023
Managed Services Provider of the YearChannel Innovation Awards, 2020
Next Generation MSPWinner, inaugural US MSP Innovation Awards, 2019
AWS Partner Awards finalistASEAN 2022; Partner of the Year, Philippines, 2023
CRN MSP 500The Channel Company, 2022
AWS Premier Consulting PartnerSince 2016, with 100+ AWS certifications on the team

Credit where it is due

Every chapter here was a team.

Cascadeo was hundreds of engineers in Manila, Legaspi and Seattle, and the leaders who ran the company with me. The clients on this page trusted those teams, not a name. PURPLE is a UWIT team, the student assistants who test it and teach others to use it, partners at Cloudforce and Microsoft, and University leadership that backed a fixed budget for three years and let the work proceed. The Seattle Internet Exchange is its member networks and two decades of volunteer board members who kept it free.

My name is on this page because it is my page. The work has many names on it, and the word I am proudest of in my LinkedIn recommendations is not "visionary." It is "mentor."

The record

Education, boards and the rest.

Education

MS, Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Washington, Paul G. Allen School, 2001
BS, Computer ScienceUniversity of Washington, Paul G. Allen School, 1998

Boards and community

Seattle Internet ExchangeFounding board director and first President; twenty years of service
Northwest Entrepreneur NetworkBoard of Directors, 2008 to 2012
UW Dempsey Startup CompetitionJudge and team mentor since 2014
DevNetworkCloud Advisory Board since 2021

Off the clock

Alpine skier
SCUBA diverPADI Advanced Open Water
Private pilot