He worked in the graphics and semiconductor industry as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in 1979 to 1983 and then General Electric through December 1988.
He joined Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1990, and was senior vice president of visual computing and advanced systems through 1999.
[1] In 1996 SGI bought Cray Research and Orton had to deal with merging the companies' overlapping technologies.
[6] Though ATI's principal location was in Markham, Ontario, Canada, Orton spent a portion of his time in California where he resided.
[9] On July 15, 2009, Orton became the CEO of Aptina, a privately held image sensor company located in San Jose, California.