S. Zachariah Sprackett
Product-centric CTO/CPO with 30 years experience leading product strategy, technology strategy, platform modernization, and high-scale operations.
| Phone: | 831-888-6189 |
| Address: | San Francisco Bay Area |
| Website: | https://zac.sprackett.com/ |
| Email: | zac@sprackett.com |
Built and led hybrid product/engineering organizations shipping multi-tenant SaaS to mid-market and enterprise customers. Proven record growing ARR, accelerating roadmap velocity, improving reliability at 60M+ MAU scale, and driving cost efficiency through cloud-native architectures and data-informed decisions.
Core Competencies
Product Strategy and Portfolio Management • Platform Modernization • Cloud/SaaS/Microservices • AI/ML Productization • Data Platforms/Analytics • Site Reliability Engineering • Security/Compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001) • GTM Partnership • Enterprise SaaS • Budgeting and Org Design • M&A/Integration • Board/Exec Communication
Experience
SugarCRM
Chief Technology Officer
Mar 2024 - Present
- Lead globally distributed Engineering, Quality Assurance, Release Management, and Cloud Operations functions.
- Own end-to-end technology strategy.
- Launched AI-assisted features (summarization, forecasting, next-best-actions) leveraging LLMs and first-party data.
- Optimized cloud spend with capacity modeling, FinOps guardrails, and right-sizing.
- Partnered with sales and customer success as executive sponsor for enterprise customers.
- Presented strategy and KPI progress to Board; aligned technology roadmap to revenue targets and gross margin model.
- Led end-to-end technology due diligence for multiple M&A opportunities, informing valuation, risk, and integration plans.
SugarCRM
Chief Product and Technology Officer
Feb 2022 to Mar 2024
- Led Product Management, Knowledge, User Experience, Engineering, Quality Assurance, Release Management, and Cloud Operations functions.
- Own end-to-end product strategy and technology vision across CRM suite serving enterprise and mid-market customers.
- Launched AI-assisted features (summarization, forecasting, next-best-actions) leveraging LLMs and first-party data.
- Scaled org to 200 across product, engineering, design, data, security; hired and developed leadership; instituted career ladders and succession plans.
- Rebuilt SDLC and SRE practices (service level objectives, error budgets, problem and incident management).
- Shifted monolith towards services-first architecture.
- Partnered with sales and customer success as executive sponsor for enterprise customers.
- Led end-to-end product and technology due diligence for multiple M&A opportunities, informing valuation, risk, and integration plans.
SugarCRM
SVP, Product
Nov 2018 to Feb 2022
- Owned execution and strategy across Product Management, UX, and Knowledge teams.
- Built an 18 month roadmap aligned to ICP pain points and win/loss insights.
- Standardized PRDs and discovery.
- Built and implemented the strategy to expand SugarCRM's product offering from a single product with two editions into discreet Marketing, Sales, and Service products with a suite of add-on products.
- Shipped ML-assisted lead and opportunity prioritization features.
- Participated in the due diligence, acquisition and integration of Collabspot, Salesfusion, and Corvana.
SugarCRM
VP, DevOps
Jul 2016 to Nov 2018
- Prepared and positioned SugarCRM for outside investment by private equity firm Accel-KKR.
- In addition to SugarCloud responsibilities, took on release management, cloud software engineering and engineering tools functions.
- Transformed the products organization from waterfall to agile development.
- Moved the company from releases every 18 to 24 months to quarterly releases.
- Improved product quality and ease of upgrade while simultaneously reducing cost of quality assurance by 60% while increasing product quality.
- Successfully architected and migrated IBM from on-premise installation to SugarCloud.
SugarCRM
VP, Cloud Operations
Aug 2011 to Jul 2016
- Hired and managed the team responsible for the availability of external facing corporate services, including our SaaS environment Sugar Cloud.
- Oversaw in-service ground up rebuild of network, hardware and services using repeatable methodologies and processes including configuration as code.
- Architected and implemented no-downtime, in service migration for SugarCloud environment from data center to AWS public cloud.
- Significantly improved performance by building out a much more reliable and performant environment.
- Designed and implemented policies and procedures for certifications including SSAE16 and ISO27001.
Geeknet
Director of Network Operations
Jan 2009 to Aug 2011
- Designed and managed network infrastructure and security systems for SourceForge, Slashdot, Freshmeat and Thinkgeek.
- Directly responsible for Network Operations and IT groups.
- Created budgets for IT spending throughout the organization.
- Managed policies and procedures for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and was active in the audit process.
- Successfully brought on two new branch offices and moved corporate headquarters from Mountain View, CA to Fairfax, VA.
Mitel Networks
Software Development Prime - Operating Systems
Aug 2006 to Jan 2009
- Managed and directed the day to day activities of a team of senior developers.
- Directly responsible for the roadmap and maintenance of the Linux platform used as the base for our entire applications portfolio.
- Involved in the development of the NuPoint Messenger, Mitel Application Suite, Teleworker, Mobile Extension, Advanced Web Conferencing and Linux Call Server product lines.
- Responsible for implementing and managing timelines as well as instituting and documenting development policies.
- Acted as primary liaison with other groups to ensure expectations were set appropriately and then met.
- Successfully designed, prototyped and managed the implementation of highly available, technically complex solutions for internal customers such as a geographically distributed clustering suite.
- Demonstrated the ability to deliver product on time and on budget while managing and reacting to changing requirements.
Mitel Networks
Senior Sales Engineer
Dec 2001 to Oct 2004
- Recruited major accounts and carrier partners.
- Successfully presented solution portfolio to audiences with varied levels of technical expertise.
- Performed business development throughout Asia Pacific region to bring new localized business offices into service.
- Coached and delivered sales and technical training seminars for both internal and external audiences.
- Worked with customers and independent labs supporting field trials and evaluations.
- Acted as liaison to channel customer requirements through product marketing and engineering.
- Developed custom software applications leveraging Mitel technologies to meet customer demands.
- Demonstrated and deployed Voice over IP and data networking solutions
- Served on the Product Security Task Force.
VA Linux
Senior Software Engineer
2000 - 2001
- Lead software designer on open source VA Cluster Management (VACM) project.
- Managed a team of software developers.
- Developed embedded applications for low-level hardware management.
- Authored and presented white papers at major technical conferences such as the Ottawa Linux Symposium and LinuxWorld Expo.
- Designed a highly available web server that was used to serve content for the successful web telecast of a Victoria's Secret fashion show.
VA Linux
Senior Sales Engineer
1998 - 2000
- Assisted Fortune 500 and government agencies in their decision making process.
- Presented solution portfolio to senior management teams.
- Created and managed customer evaluation programs.
- Grew North American sales 500% to a run rate of over 50 million dollars per quarter.
- Delivered pre and post sales expertise in both product and service domains.
Corel Computer Corp
Software Engineer
1997 to 1998
- Assisted in port of Linux operating system to the ARM CPU based NetWinder.
- Maintained master distribution image as well as build tools.
- Lead engineer on WebFront small business web based management solution.
- Presented at various trade shows such as Linux Expo and ISP Con.
- Founding member of the NetWinder.org community development portal.
Advisory Roles
Plato
Founding Mentor
2017 - Present
SugarCRM Canada Inc
Board Member
2012 - 2021
Certifications
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
(ISC)²
Mar 2015 - Present
Certfied Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
ISACA
May 2016 - Present
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional
Amazon Web Services
Dec 2014