Mass Effect Andromeda Q&A Panel at Montreal Comic Con, 8th July 2017, "Can not comment on future pro

Nah, it's bad writing, Ryder is immediately treated like the second coming by the general populous and given massive power and responsibility with zero oversight on their first day.

Ash in ME1 is a Gunnery Chief. It's an Alliance-specific rank, though considering she's with Alliance Marines, it could be similar to the rank of Gunnery Sergeant (GySgt) of the USMC. Ensign/Lieutenant Junior Grade are US Navy's O-1 and O-2 (Officer) equal to 2LT and 1LT in the Army and Marine Corps. The Navy's rank of Lieutenant is actually correspondent to other branches Captain rank, while Navy's Captain would be on par with a Colonel in other branches.

Shepard is a Commander, or Lieutenant Colonel throughout the game. Ashley by ME3 is promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, which is ironic, considering Gunnery Chief sounds more Marine-like. This puts her one rank below Shepard in Alliance chain of command, at rank equal to Major. (Kaidan gets the promotion from Lieutenant to Major, in those exact words)

All in all, Ashley would be an E-7 or thereabouts, jumping eight or so ranks. Still, she's quite above Ryders who aren't even in command of a squad far as I can tell. Neither Sara nor Scott probably made it past E-4 (Corporal/Specialist/Petty Officer 3rd Class in USMC/US Army/USN respectively) before the Initiative left the Milky Way.

Sheesh, I should probably stop doing these comparisons since the ranks in ME often are chosen to sound cool, not because they make sense - see GyCH Williams becoming a LtCdr.

I'm actually sitting here refreshing this page....on a Saturday night.  Bugger me I have no life.

Same. It's typical that we don't have anyone at Comic-Con, or at least, no-one has come forward about it.