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Innovation thrives at Signifyd when diverse perspectives come together to solve complex challenges. Across our global technology teams, women are leading the way — designing solutions, mentoring others and redefining what it means to build fearless commerce.
We connected with several of the incredible women on our tech team to hear about their journeys into technology, what drives their passion for problem-solving, and how Signifyd’s culture empowers them to grow, collaborate and lead with confidence. These are their stories.
Designing better experiences through empathy and experimentation
Orla Glancy – Senior Product Manager, Belfast
Orla’s path into tech started early, as the go-to “family tech support” and through roles at Carphone Warehouse, Samsung, Experian and PwC. Each step sharpened a different skill: understanding customers, tackling fraud and identity challenges and designing technology-led solutions to real business problems. Joining Signifyd became the natural next move — a place where those experiences intersect.
Orla Glancy
As senior product manager for Signifyd’s customer-facing console, Orla spends her days partnering with customers, digging into data and collaborating closely with design and engineering to continuously improve the tools merchants rely on. She uses insights from analytic tools to identify opportunities, prototype solutions and turn feedback into meaningful features.
She’s especially proud of leading the evolution of the console over the past four years — a highly visible, high-stakes piece of Signifyd’s solutions, where “everyone has an opinion.” By building a strong, trusting partnership across teams, Orla has helped deliver a console experience that delights customers and reflects their needs, sometimes before they even articulate them.
Navigating motherhood at a pivotal stage in her career has been one of her biggest challenges. Setting boundaries, involving her daughters in understanding what she does and giving herself permission to grow have been key. Her advice to women in tech: Don’t be intimidated by the word “tech” — there is space for every skill set and you can go far by leaving your ego at the door and being clear about what you want.
Building modern, inclusive frontends and communities
Amy Williams – Senior Software Engineer II, UK
Amy’s love for tech began with helping her dad troubleshoot computers, eventually leading her to an IT diploma, a computer science degree and a career in software engineering. She gravitated toward frontend development, drawn to its pace, creativity and constant learning. When she discovered Signifyd, its culture, flexibility and visible commitment to inclusion stood out immediately.
Amy Williams
Today, Amy balances deep-focus development with mentorship and collaboration. Her mornings often start with unblockers — code reviews, support for teammates, followed by dedicated time to ship high-quality frontend features and improvements to the tech stack. She also invests in elevating the developer experience across teams.
One highlight: leading the effort to roll out a modernized theme across key customer-facing applications — a change that required careful planning, incremental releases and close attention to customer impact. The result is a consistent, trustworthy, modern interface that reinforces Signifyd’s brand and improves user experience at scale.
While she’s experienced subtle bias in past roles, Amy’s response has been to strengthen her technical voice, advocate for inclusive environments and help others do the same. She’s found Signifyd’s approach to inclusion “distinctively proactive,” from Women at Signifyd initiatives and engaging speakers to engineering onsites and Innovation Days that promote learning, visibility and cross-functional connection. Her message to women in tech: Take the leap, stay curious, be yourself and find the network that champions your growth.
Advancing AI with curiosity, rigor and mentorship
Katherine Wood – Staff Machine Learning Engineer, U.S.
Katherine didn’t start out planning a career in tech. A psychology major with a love for Latin and a growing side interest in computer science, she gradually built a toolkit of programming, statistics and experimental design skills. After completing her Ph.D., and deciding academia wasn’t her long-term path, she pivoted into data science and eventually to Signifyd, through an employee referral from a student she met while honing her skills. Now a staff machine learning engineer on the Signifyd AI Lab (SAIL) pipelines team, Katherine focuses on the infrastructure and tools that power experimentation and model deployment. Her day-to-day involves writing and reviewing code, designing systems, unblocking modelers and ensuring teams can reliably ship high-performing models into production.
Katherine Wood
One of her proudest accomplishments is leading the development of an automated threshold management system (DMI), which helps balance ecommerce order approval rates and fraud risk at scale. What started as the largest project she’d ever led is now a critical piece of Signifyd’s decisioning engine and a testament to what thoughtful technical leadership can unlock.
Katherine is quick to acknowledge the importance of supportive peers and mentors — people who are smart, generous with their expertise and committed to equity. She values Signifyd’s executive leadership’s visible support for inclusion and the emphasis on diverse interview panels, which create space for women candidates to ask real questions and see themselves represented. Her advice: Don’t close doors on yourself. Apply even if you’re not “100% ready,” and find trusted people you can speak openly with when you’re navigating gray areas or headwinds.
Building the systems and confidence behind trusted decisions
Fernanda Melo – Manager, Data Science, Brazil
For Fernanda, tech felt like a natural extension of her love for math and engineering. With experience spanning startups and large-scale enterprises, she found her ideal balance at Signifyd: meaningful scale, impactful challenges and a sustainable culture.
As a data science manager in the risk organization, Fernanda leads a team of 10 data scientists while also acting as a technical and strategic anchor. Her team supports regional business units with feature engineering, workflow automation and cross-functional projects that directly influence model performance and merchant outcomes.
Fernanda Melo
Fernanda played a key role in designing Signifyd’s early automated training and retraining workflows on Databricks — work that reshaped how models are operationalized, reduced training time from weeks to hours, enabled scheduled retraining and established maching learning operations standards still in use today.
Early in her career, she saw her technical input questioned in ways that her male peers didn’t experience. She responded by doubling down on technical excellence, asserting her perspective with clarity and intentionally choosing environments that value inclusion. At Signifyd, she’s found leaders who actively sponsor women’s growth, ensure visibility in promotions and cross-discipline forums and evaluate competence fairly.
Her advice to women: Invest as intentionally in your confidence and mental health as you do in your technical skills and be selective about where you work. Seek cultures where you’re valued, not just tolerated.
Leading risk strategy for LATAM with bravery and balance
Mariana Calderón – Manager, Data Science, Mexico
Mariana’s journey into tech began with applied mathematics and computer science, followed by roles in software development and data science across logistics and real estate. A strong recommendation from a colleague — highlighting Signifyd’s values, culture and leadership — inspired her to join in 2021.
As the leader of the risk team for Latin America, Mariana oversees a multidisciplinary group focused on one core mission: help merchants maximize profit by stopping fraud while keeping the experience seamless for good customers. She structures her team into “conceptual pods” focused on ownership areas for fraud workflows, onboarding, model health and specific accounts, empowering individuals to take the lead while staying aligned with shared goals.
Mariana Calderón
Among her proudest achievements is helping standardize Signifyd’s offline proof-of-value (POV) process in LATAM, turning what started as bespoke, complex evaluations into a scalable, repeatable framework now used widely, especially in Brazil. That work has strengthened Signifyd’s position in competitive deals and brought clarity and rigor to how success is measured.
Along the way, Mariana has had to unlearn perfectionism — pushing herself to be “brave, not perfect,” raising her hand even when she doesn’t have every answer. Supportive leaders who advocate for visibility, a challenging work environment, and a bunch of role models at Signifyd that inspire her have played a big part in her growth. Her biggest advice for women in tech is to intentionally build a network, as a space for shared learning and mutual support.
What are the common threads among successful women in tech?
Across time zones and disciplines, Orla, Amy, Katherine, Fernanda and Mariana share a few powerful common threads: curiosity that opened unexpected doors, mentors and leaders who invested in their potential and a commitment to lifting others as they grow.
At Signifyd, women in tech are not only designing fraud protection systems, refining AI pipelines and leading high-impact teams, they are shaping how we hire, collaborate and create space for every voice to be heard.
Their stories are a reminder to future and emerging women technologists everywhere:
There is room for you here. You don’t have to fit a mold. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to take the next step and find a community that backs you while you do it.
Photos by Signifyd
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