How Arkestro Supercharged Developer Efficiency and Slashed Costs with Signadot

The Company

Arkestro empowers organizations to tackle complex procurement challenges using predictive software powered by machine learning and behavioral science. Based in San Francisco, their 40-person engineering team drives innovation to deliver impactful solutions while reducing costs.

“Our engineering culture at Arkestro focuses on holistic, customer-centric solutions that challenge norms and drive innovation. This approach ensures we deliver unrelenting quality while streamlining collaboration.” — Samantha Thibodeau, Engineering Manager, Arkestro

The Problem: Testing at Scale

Arkestro’s transition to continuous development exposed critical bottlenecks in their deployment process: code changes often caused regressions after merging due to insufficient pre-merge testing in production-like environments. However, creating ephemeral environments for each test was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.

“Delivering high-quality solutions is our top priority. Any process that risks product quality or disrupts our workflows needs immediate attention.” — Samantha Thibodeau, Engineering Manager, Arkestro

Why Signadot?

After evaluating several options—including building an in-house solution—Arkestro chose Signadot for its seamless integration with Kubernetes and Istio routing systems. Unlike alternatives requiring extensive custom scripting, Signadot offered out-of-the-box support for environment lifecycle management and routing.

“Signadot allowed us to focus our engineering resources on building procurement AI functionality rather than reinventing infrastructure tools.” — Aziel Ferguson, Director of Engineering Operations, Arkestro

Implementation: Faster Than Expected

The implementation process took just 80 hours—less than half the time required for an in-house solution—and included:

• Deploying Signadot using Helm via ArgoCD.
• Adding custom patches for resource settings and AWS Secrets Manager integration.

Arkestro also built custom integrations such as:

• A Terraform plugin to clone staging databases (Postgres/Redis).
• GitHub automation for sandbox creation via pull request labels.
• RouteGroups connecting multiple sandboxes across repositories.

Developer Workflow with Signadot

Before adopting Signadot, Arkestro faced challenges in testing code changes efficiently without risking regressions post-merge. With Signadot integrated into their development workflow, they now seamlessly create production-like environments for every pull request (PR), transforming how developers test and validate changes.

1. Pull Request Creation: Developers create a pull request (PR) in GitHub for new features or bug fixes.
2. Sandbox Creation via Labels: Adding a specific label (e.g., sandbox) triggers Signadot to spin up an ephemeral sandbox environment.
3. Environment Access: Developers receive a unique URL linked to the sandbox environment directly within GitHub.
4. Testing & Validation: Developers validate changes against real-world configurations; stakeholders like QA engineers or product managers can also review functionality.
5. Feedback Loop: If issues are identified during testing, developers can iterate quickly by making updates directly within the PR. Once all tests pass and stakeholders approve, the code is merged into production branches with confidence.

“With Signadot’s PR integration, testing has become seamless—developers can validate changes without worrying about setting up environments manually.”— Samantha Thibodeau, Engineering Manager, Arkestro

Signadot has become a core part of Arkestro’s development workflow (illustrated below), enabling developers to test code changes in production-like environments before merging.

Real Results

Since adopting Signadot:

• $1M+ in annual developer bandwidth savings: A 12.5% increase in developer bandwidth translates to approximately $25,000 saved per year per developer across their 40-person engineering team. This improvement stems from reducing time spent on debugging regressions and manually setting up test environments.
• Over 2,000 sandboxes created (60/month on average), enabling faster iteration cycles and more efficient pre-merge testing.
• $120,000 saved in implementation costs, compared to building an in-house solution.
• 5 hours saved per week per developer, thanks to streamlined testing workflows and the ability to validate changes pre-merge.

These results have not only accelerated development cycles but also enhanced collaboration between engineering, QA teams, and stakeholders. Developers now spend more time building innovative features and less time troubleshooting issues post-merge.

“Being able to validate features against staging environments before merging has been fantastic—it’s improved code quality by catching defects earlier.” — Samantha Thibodeau, Engineering Manager, Arkestro

What's Next

Looking ahead, Arkestro plans to expand its use of Signadot by:

1. Implementing pre-merge testing as a critical quality gate.
2. Increasing coverage across all applications.
3. Automating test triggers upon sandbox deployment.

“Signadot is a key enabler of our continuous deployment framework—it ensures only code meeting our standards reaches production.” — Aziel Ferguson, Director of Engineering Operations, Arkestro

As Arkestro continues scaling operations and refining CI/CD processes, Signadot will remain a cornerstone of their strategy—helping them achieve seamless continuous deployment while maintaining high product quality.