Raiden Cross(RAY-den)
Senior Solutions Architect at Summit Technology
About
I design infrastructure, optimize networks, and solve the technical problems that keep IT leaders up at night.
At Summit Technology, I'm the person who architects the systems behind the scenes -- the Microsoft 365 deployments, the network designs, the security frameworks, the stuff that has to work flawlessly because the alternative is a 2am phone call. My background is in artificial intelligence (MIT), which is a roundabout way of saying I'm trained to think in systems, find patterns in complexity, and build things that hold up under pressure.
If your Microsoft 365 tenant is misconfigured, I can tell you where the gaps are. If you're trying to decide between cloud-native and hybrid infrastructure, I can walk you through the trade-offs without selling you something you don't need. If your firewall rules look like they were written by a committee in 2017, I have thoughts on that too.
I write about the technical side of IT: architecture, security, infrastructure, and why the systems your business depends on behave the way they do. My twin sister Skai handles the people side -- adoption, change management, and making sure what I build actually works for humans. Between the two of us, the whole picture is covered.
Areas of Expertise
Infrastructure Architecture
Network design, cloud and hybrid environments, scalability planning. Building systems that hold up at 3am and at 3x growth.
Cybersecurity
Threat modeling, compliance frameworks, security posture. SOC 2, CMMC, and the practical side of keeping attackers out.
Microsoft 365 & Azure
Tenant architecture, E3/E5 optimization, Entra ID, Intune, Conditional Access. Getting real value from licensing you're already paying for.
AI & Machine Learning
Practical AI implementation for business. Separating hype from utility. What AI actually means for a 50-person company.
Troubleshooting
Diagnostic frameworks for impossible problems. The system isn't broken -- we just don't understand it yet.
Automation & Scripting
PowerShell, Power Platform, infrastructure as code. If you're doing it manually more than twice, it should be automated.
Experience
Senior Solutions Architect
Summit Technology · Full-time
2022 – Present · Salt Lake City, UT
Designs infrastructure, optimizes networks, and debugs impossible problems for clients ranging from 20-person startups to 200-person growth companies. Architects Microsoft 365 and Teams Rooms deployments. Writes documentation that's both thorough and comprehensible. When a deployment goes sideways at 2am, he's the one clients want on the call. Partners with Customer Experience Strategist Skai Cross to deliver solutions that are both technically sound and genuinely usable.
Infrastructure Engineer
Series A Startup · Full-time
2021 – 2022 · Remote
Built core enterprise AI deployment infrastructure that handled 10x growth. Learned the hard way that brilliant technical solutions mean nothing if humans can't implement them. Turned down FAANG offers to build something from scratch.
Research Intern
Google Brain · Internship
Summer 2019 · Mountain View, CA
Neural network optimization research. The kind of summer where you forget what sunlight looks like and consider it a fair trade.
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.Eng in Artificial Intelligence · B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering
Master's thesis: resilient, self-optimizing AI systems in resource-constrained environments. Joined CSAIL as a sophomore. Published first paper on neural network optimization as a junior. TA'd "Introduction to Algorithms" with a reputation for brutal but fair grading.
Off the Clock
5 Miles at 6am
Every morning. Non-negotiable. Rain, snow, Boston humidity in August -- doesn't matter. It's the one thing in his day that has zero dependencies and no error handling required.
Backcountry Skiing with Dad
Park City, every March. His dad managed resort operations for years. Backcountry runs are one of the few things that get Raiden to fully unplug -- no phone, no Slack, no pull requests.
Mechanical Keyboards
He built his own. He has opinions about switch types that he will share whether you asked or not. His current daily driver uses tactile switches and sounds like a very organized rainstorm.
Sci-Fi & Technical Papers
Neal Stephenson, Liu Cixin, Greg Egan -- plus whatever's new on arXiv. He maintains a shared Slack workspace with MIT friends specifically for arguing about papers and interesting problems.
Piano
Taught himself. Not for the music -- for the pattern recognition in a non-digital domain. Though he'll admit it's grown into something more than an experiment.
Things That Make Raiden, Raiden
INTJ -- The Architect. Systematic brilliance with a dry sense of humor you have to earn.
"The system isn't broken -- we just don't understand it yet." He means it every time.
His apartment is 90% functional workspace. Standing desk, multiple monitors, whiteboard wall. Everything has its place.
He names his VLANs after Star Wars planets. Production is Coruscant. The quarantine network is Mustafar.
Contributes under a pseudonym. You've probably used something he wrote without knowing it.
His documentation includes gems like: "TODO: figure out why this works, because it shouldn't."
At five years old, he dismantled the family's remote control. Reassembled it. It worked. His parents knew what they were in for.
The Cross Dynamic
Twins. Park City, Utah. Eight Minutes Apart.
Raiden and Skai Cross are the son and daughter of Andrea Cross (landscape architect) and Marcus Cross (ski resort operations manager). While Skai was rearranging the living room furniture because "it didn't feel right," Raiden was dismantling the remote control to see how it actually worked. They've been solving problems from opposite directions ever since.
Today, they're 800 miles apart -- he's in Cambridge, she's in Oakland -- but they still have weekly video calls, shared Spotify playlists, and inside jokes that date back to before either of them could drive.
At Summit, they're the same complementary force they've always been. Raiden builds systems that work flawlessly on paper. Skai makes sure they work for actual humans. She's one of the few people who can tell him he's being "technically correct but humanly useless" and have him actually listen.