Chief Architect, SugarCRM
$180-240k
+ Annual bonus
3+ days a week in office
Customer relationship management platform
Open for applications
Customer relationship management platform
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$180-240k
+ Annual bonus
3+ days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To help marketing, sales and customer service teams achieve high-definition customer experiences by providing the CRM platform that makes the hard things easier.
Role
Who you are
- If you're looking to level up your career and help businesses grow better and faster, you’re in the right place
- The ideal candidate brings a rare blend of strategic clarity, deep technical judgment, and leadership presence capable of influencing across the executive team and inspiring a global team of architects and engineers
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience
- 12+ years in software architecture or engineering leadership
- 5+ years managing teams of architects or senior engineers, with at least one major platform modernization (monolith to microservices) successfully completed
- Proven experience shaping architecture for large-scale SaaS or enterprise software products
- Proven track record leading large-scale platform modernizations (e.g., monolith to microservices, legacy to cloud-native)
- Experience with enterprise PHP applications or similar legacy platforms requiring modernization
- Demonstrated ability to architect parallel operations strategies during major migrations
- Success balancing innovation with legacy system maintenance
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native design, data modeling, and integration architectures
- Strong grasp of AWS ecosystem (primary platform) including EKS, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and core infrastructure services and modern infrastructure practices (e.g., Kubernetes, CI/CD, infrastructure as code)
- Experience guiding system evolution toward modular, scalable, API-first, and service-oriented design patterns
- Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate across technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Track record of delivering architectural transformations that improved scalability, reliability, and developer velocity
- Experience building or governing architecture frameworks and design review processes
- Experience leading distributed and offshore engineering teams
- Success establishing architectural standards across multiple development locations
- A balanced mindset that allows you to think strategically but act pragmatically
- We want you to learn new things in this role, and we encourage you to apply if your experience is close to what we’re looking for
What the job involves
- SugarCRM is seeking a strategic, technically fluent, and business-minded transformation focused leader to serve as our Chief Architect
- This role is ideal for a systems thinker who can translate business strategy into actionable technology strategy shaping the architecture that powers SugarCRM’s next decade of innovation
- SugarCRM is in the midst of a multi-year platform modernization, transitioning from a monolithic application architecture to a cloud-native, microservices-based platform on AWS
- This role will lead the architectural strategy for this transformation, including:
- Parallel operation of legacy and modern systems during migration
- Gradual migration of customers and capabilities while maintaining business continuity
- Defining the target state architecture while pragmatically managing the transition path
- Balancing technical debt reduction with new capability development
- This is a transformation role, not a steady-state architecture position
- The Chief Architect will lead the architecture function, define the north star for our platform evolution, and ensure that technology decisions accelerate our business objectives
- Lead architectural governance including approval authority for major design decisions
- Partner with executives and functional leaders to understand business goals and translate them into a coherent, prioritized, and executable technology roadmap
- Establish and evolve a clear architectural blueprint that aligns with business priorities, product direction, and operational realities, including defining the migration path from legacy monolithic architecture to cloud-native microservices
- Provide architectural guidance and financial rationale for key technology bets, ensuring scalability and long-term return on investment
- Build, mentor, and empower a team of domain architects across application, data, integration, and infrastructure disciplines, growing from 1 to approximately 5 architects within the first year
- Implement frameworks for decision-making, technical standards, and measurable architectural health indicators
- Establish and lead architectural standards, principles, and review processes that balance agility with long-term maintainability and scalability
- Partner closely with engineering and cloud leadership to ensure architecture decisions accelerate product development and drive operational excellence
- Guide modernization efforts including cloud-native design, microservices evolution, event-driven architectures, and API strategy, with specific focus on managing parallel operations of legacy and modern systems during the transition
- Ensure consistency across systems, from customer-facing applications to internal services, data pipelines, and analytics platforms
- Work with Product Management, Security, Product Support, and Cloud Operations to ensure platform evolution aligns with business needs, compliance, and customer expectations
- Translate complex technical strategies into clear narratives for executives, engineers, partners, and customers
- Contribute architectural guidance to major initiatives such as platform convergence, and AI-driven product capabilities
- Define key metrics for architecture effectiveness and ensure continuous improvement through feedback loops and technology assessments
Our take
Many leading CRM software require a lot of manual entry, but have little job-specific functionality, making tracking and interacting with potential and current customers time-consuming and inefficient. SugarCRM, which started as a project to elevate CRM with automation, has since grown into an AI-driven cloud product used by thousands of companies across the globe.
The Sugar Platform incorporates robust cloud structures and security, presents AI-powered predictions for customer trajectories and supports macro and micro customisation options. Importantly, its versatility and flexibility make it suitable for multiple teams across the CRM landscape.
Though it's far from the only CRM platform on the market, SugarCRM’s longevity as a company exemplifies its trusted status among businesses from many sectors. Ultimately, CRMs are a vital part of almost all industries, and Sugar’s established place in the market gives it plenty of scope for further success.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Jul 2019
$16m
LATE VC
Jan 2015
$3.6m
CONVERTIBLE
Total funding: $139.2m
Company benefits
- Excellent healthcare package for you and your family
- Savings and Investment – 401(k) match
- Unlimited Paid Time Off
- Paid Parental Leave
- Online Legal Services (Rocket Lawyer)
- Financial Planning Services (Origin)
- Discounted Pet Insurance (Embrace Pet Insurance)
- Corporate Benefit Program (Working Advantage). This benefit offers you exclusive travel and entertainment offers and special discounts that are not available to the general public
- Health and Wellness Reimbursement Program
- Travel Discounts
- Educational Resources - Career & Personal Development Program
- Employee Referral Bonus Program
- We are a merit-based company - many opportunities to learn, excel and grow your career!
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Clint Oram
(Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer)Previously Product Manager at Epiphany and Software Engineer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
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