Axon standardizes data operations, doubles engineering productivity

“Fivetran gave us the scalable data foundation we needed. Trust in our data is high and enables our 3-person team to operate like a team of 6, focusing on unlocking business value as opposed to pipelines.”
– James Gould, Enterprise Data Architect, Axon

Axon Enterprise builds public safety technology used by more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across more than 100 countries. As the company expanded its product portfolio and accelerated acquisitions, its internal corporate data analytics and reporting demands grew just as quickly.

When James Gould joined Axon in late 2023, he set a clear vision: build a scalable, trusted data foundation across internal teams.

At the time, Axon’s corporate analytics stack relied on a legacy environment. Three developers were primarily dedicated to maintaining data pipelines and keeping data flowing across dozens of sources, rather than building new capabilities.

Axon needed more than new connectors — it needed a standardized, reliable operating model for ingestion.

One operating model for 50+ systems

With a lean, 3-person engineering team responsible for more than 50 systems, spanning databases, CRMs, ERPs, and applications of every kind, Axon couldn’t afford platform sprawl. Instead of continuing to manage custom extraction scripts and fragmented ingestion tools, the team centralized ingestion in Snowflake using Fivetran. The team could not only instantly ingest data from systems like Greenhouse, ServiceNow, and Salesforce, but model it for analytics using Fivetran's integrated Transformations offering. The results were immediate. As Axon continued to grow with new acquisitions, new niche systems introduced complex ingestion needs. In many organizations, this is where fragmentation begins — supported systems go into one platform, unsupported systems into custom scripts. Axon chose a different path. 

With Fivetran Connector SDK, the team built custom extraction logic while staying within the same ingestion framework used for native connectors. Monitoring, alerting, auditing, and governance remained consistent across all data sources. Instead of increasing technical overhead as the business grew, Axon maintained a single, standardized ingestion layer with Fivetran. 

“Connector SDK lets us move faster without giving up operational control. We can build what we need and still keep monitoring, alerting, and auditing consistently, so onboarding stays predictable and reliability stays high.”
– James Gould, Enterprise Data Architect, Axon

With a standardized ingestion layer in place via Fivetran, reliability improved dramatically, reaching 99.97% uptime for Axon employees who utilized the data. Data is fresher and consistently delivered, many reports are self-serve within minutes, and most new reporting needs can be fulfilled in a single sprint.

Free from constant pipeline maintenance, Axon’s 3-person data team could deliver the output of 6 full-time engineers — enabling faster, more informed decision-making. What was once a maintenance burden is now a scalable foundation that supports Axon’s continued growth.

As Axon has grown in part through acquisitions, the rapid integration of new systems is critical. By combining AI copilots such as Cursor with the Connector SDK, the team now builds new connectors in as little as 30 minutes. Gould’s team can build what they need in a timely manner without breaking their operational model. The result is greater independence, faster project delivery, and sustained governance across systems. Axon is now prepared to integrate data from virtually any source in the future without compromising reliability. 

Looking ahead, the team plans to continue using Fivetran to accelerate onboarding additional data sources, and expand Connector SDK to additional internal network sources, with AI coding assistants helping them ship custom connectors even faster.

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