About us.

ForgeHarbor was founded in 2018 by infrastructure practitioners who believed platform work should be understandable, durable, and useful. Today we help ambitious engineering teams turn fragmented cloud operations into resilient, self-service platforms.

Our story.

ForgeHarbor was founded by a group of infrastructure engineers who had worked at several high-growth tech companies. We'd seen the same patterns repeat: brilliant engineers stuck wrestling with fragmented cloud infrastructure, unclear ownership boundaries, and operational chaos that slowed down shipping.

We believed platform work could be different—clear, intentional, and designed to make teams stronger. So in 2018, we started ForgeHarbor with a simple mission: help engineering teams build platforms that actually work.

Since then, we've helped dozens of companies design, modernize, and operate cloud foundations that scale with their teams. We work on everything from landing zones and identity to developer platforms and reliability engineering. But the core principle never changes: systems that teach, infrastructure that lasts, and teams that are stronger when we leave.

Our values.

Candor Over Ceremony

We have honest conversations about tradeoffs, constraints, and what actually matters. No unnecessary complexity or pretense.

Systems That Teach

We build infrastructure designed to be understood and operated by your teams. Documentation, clear patterns, and understandable decisions.

Security as Design Input

Security isn't bolted on at the end. It's a core input to every architecture decision, trading off visibility and cost-awareness against access and compliance needs.

Leave Teams Stronger

Our work is done when your engineers have the skills, confidence, and infrastructure to move independently. That's success.

The team.

The people behind ForgeHarbor bring deep experience across infrastructure, platform engineering, reliability, and security.

Maya Bennett, CEO

Maya Bennett

Chief Executive Officer

Maya co-founded ForgeHarbor after seven years leading infrastructure and platform teams at a series of high-growth companies. She's passionate about building platforms that empower teams to move independently and confidently. Maya holds a degree in computer science from UC Berkeley and advises several early-stage infrastructure startups.

Daniel Mercer, CTO

Daniel Mercer

Chief Technology Officer

Daniel leads our technical vision and architecture across all client projects. He's a veteran infrastructure engineer with 15+ years of experience building and operating cloud systems at scale. Daniel is particularly focused on infrastructure as code, observability, and making complexity accessible to teams.

Priya Nanduri, VP Platform Engineering

Priya Nanduri

VP, Platform Engineering

Priya leads our platform engineering practice and brings expertise in developer experience, self-service infrastructure, and scaling platform teams. She's led platform engineering initiatives at three major tech companies and is passionate about reducing cognitive load on engineers. Priya is a frequent speaker at infrastructure and platform engineering conferences.

Owen Carlisle, Director of Cloud Architecture

Owen Carlisle

Director of Cloud Architecture

Owen brings 18+ years of cloud architecture and infrastructure design experience. He specializes in designing landing zones, account structures, and networking patterns that allow organizations to scale safely. Owen has helped teams architect cloud foundations for everyone from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Elise Thornton, Director of Reliability Engineering

Elise Thornton

Director of Reliability Engineering

Elise leads our reliability and observability practice. She's a veteran SRE who has managed incident response at scale and designed observability strategies for some of the internet's most critical systems. Elise is passionate about turning observability data into action and making incident response less chaotic.

Marcus Hale, Principal Security Engineer

Marcus Hale

Principal Security Engineer

Marcus brings 12+ years of security and compliance experience. He specializes in designing security controls that don't slow down engineering teams. Marcus believes security should be built in, not bolted on, and brings deep expertise in policy as code, identity and access management, and compliance frameworks.

Tessa Whitcomb, Head of Developer Experience

Tessa Whitcomb

Head of Developer Experience

Tessa leads our focus on making infrastructure pleasant to use. She's designed internal developer platforms for companies with hundreds of engineers and knows firsthand how small friction multiplies across a team. Tessa combines product thinking with infrastructure expertise to create platforms people actually want to use.

Julian Reyes, Principal Cloud Consultant

Julian Reyes

Principal Cloud Consultant

Julian brings 16+ years of cloud infrastructure and digital transformation experience. He specializes in large-scale migrations and complex multi-cloud environments. Julian is known for his ability to build trust with engineering teams and help organizations navigate ambitious infrastructure changes without disrupting product delivery.

Naomi Fletcher, Client Delivery Director

Naomi Fletcher

Client Delivery Director

Naomi leads all client engagements at ForgeHarbor, ensuring that projects stay on track and deliver measurable value. She brings 10+ years of program management experience and believes that clear communication and strong relationships are the foundation of successful infrastructure transformation. Naomi is passionate about knowledge transfer and team enablement.

Graham Ellison, Operations & Finance Lead

Graham Ellison

Operations & Finance Lead

Graham manages the business operations and finances of ForgeHarbor. He brings 14+ years of experience in operations, finance, and business management across technology companies. Graham is committed to building a sustainable company that attracts talented people and delivers genuine value to clients.

Let's build something better together.

Our team is ready to help you design, modernize, and operate platforms that work.

Get in Touch