About us
Signal Orchard exists to make data work sturdier, clearer, and more useful for the people who run the business every day.
Our story
Operational complexity is where most companies accumulate technical debt. You start with one ERP system, add a cloud data warehouse for analytics, introduce a specialized tool for supply chain, and suddenly you're managing integration points that nobody fully understands. Data gets copied, transformed, and reconciled manually. Staff builds shadow reports in spreadsheets because the official system can't answer their questions. Automation projects start with promises and end with systems that no one trusts.
We've seen this pattern repeat across dozens of companies. The problem isn't usually the technology—it's that most solutions prioritize elegance over operation. They're designed to impress technical audiences, not to solve the actual work that needs to happen tomorrow.
Signal Orchard was founded to build differently. We work with operations leaders, finance teams, and data teams to turn fragmented systems into dependable pipelines. We don't build perfect—we build practical. We don't optimize for elegance—we optimize for clarity, ownership, and operational confidence.
How we work
Practical over performative
We care about whether it works in production, not how impressive it looks on a slide. Governance without overhead. Automation that teams actually use. Code that operates at 3 AM without waking anyone up.
Visible over mysterious
Every system we build comes with clear documentation, audit trails, and decision logs. We don't believe in black-box AI or "trust the algorithm." Ops leaders and auditors need to see how decisions are made.
Maintainable over clever
We favor straightforward code, obvious patterns, and solutions your team can own. Technical elegance is secondary to the ability of the next engineer to understand it in six months.
Accountable after launch
Success isn't a handoff—it's what happens in week 13. We measure ourselves by production performance, not completion dates. We stay involved and improve based on real outcomes.
The team
Mara Ellison
Founder & Principal Data Strategist
Mara leads discovery work for multi-system operations and turns executive questions into buildable data priorities. She spent a decade building data infrastructure at logistics and manufacturing firms before starting Signal Orchard.
Graham Holt
Director of Data Engineering
Graham designs resilient ingestion, transformation, and testing patterns for high-change source environments. His background spans data warehouse architecture at scale, from schema design to production optimization.
Priya Nanduri
AI Automation Lead
Priya builds human-reviewed automations for document routing, exception triage, and internal knowledge work. She focuses on systems that augment staff capabilities without creating black-box risk.
Elliot Brooks
Analytics Engineering Manager
Elliot makes reporting logic understandable by bringing metrics, models, and documentation into one dependable layer. They champion semantic layers and dbt best practices across projects.
Naomi Carter
Client Delivery Director
Naomi keeps cross-functional programs moving with clear decisions, practical milestones, and direct communication. She ensures projects stay aligned with business outcomes and handoff is smooth.
Daniel Mercer
Platform Reliability Engineer
Daniel monitors the health of pipelines and creates early-warning systems before missed data becomes missed decisions. His work spans observability, alerting, and automated recovery.
Leah Whitmore
Product Designer, Data Tools
Leah designs internal tools that help nontechnical teams investigate, act, and trust what they see. She brings user research and accessibility practices to data tooling.
Owen Fitzgerald
Senior Data Engineer
Owen specializes in untangling older operational systems and converting brittle extracts into maintainable flows. His expertise in legacy system integration saves projects months of discovery.
Tessa Morgan
Automation Solutions Architect
Tessa maps repetitive business processes and identifies automation boundaries that preserve human judgment. She bridges operational needs with technical implementation.
Caleb Reeves
Data Governance Consultant
Caleb helps teams define ownership, access rules, metric definitions, and responsible operating habits. He works across finance, operations, and engineering to establish sustainable governance.
Ready to work together?
Let's talk about your operational data challenges and how Signal Orchard can help.
Schedule a conversation