Founding CTO - Lead CRM Development

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$70,000.00/yr - $/yr

Annual Bonus

Founding CTO - Nonprofit CRM Platform (Sapling)

Comp: 70-100k Base salary + Equity available
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Sapling is building a modern, systems-heavy CRM platform for nonprofits designed to handle fundraising, volunteers, contacts, donations, events, reporting, payments, and so much more in one unified product.

We’re now funded and hiring a Founding CTO to own the technical foundation of the platform end-to-end.

The CRM product and features are already fully designed. This role is focused on implementation, engineering execution, and scaling, not product ideation.

This is not a simple donor database or lightweight SaaS.

This is a mission-critical system that nonprofits rely on to run operations, move money, and generate reports and it requires serious technical ownership.

As Founding CTO, you will be the technical owner of Sapling’s nonprofit CRM.

• Implementing complex domain models (donors, organizations, funds, events, transactions, reports)
• Building and scaling payment infrastructure (Stripe, webhooks, subscriptions, failure handling)
• Implementing fundraising and donation workflows from existing product specifications
• Implementing automation systems (rules, triggers, async execution)
• Implementing role-based permissions across organizations and teams
• Building and maintaining third-party integrations (payments, email, accounting, exports)
• Ensuring data integrity, auditability, and reporting accuracy
• Making foundational decisions around system architecture and scalability
• Hiring and leading 1–2 senior engineers under you
• Working directly with founders on roadmap, tradeoffs, and execution

You will write code. You will make architectural decisions. You will own the consequences.

• ✔ You’ve built real B2B SaaS platforms used in production
• ✔ You’ve worked on CRM, ERP, fintech, or nonprofit / compliance-adjacent systems
• ✔ You understand payments beyond “Stripe Checkout”
• ✔ You’ve designed systems involving:
  • financial transactions
  • async workflows
  • webhooks
  • permissions and access control
• You think in systems, constraints, and long-term maintainability

• ✘ You’ve only built basic dashboards or CRUD apps
• ✘ You’ve never owned production payment or reporting systems
• ✘ You want tightly scoped tickets instead of ownership
• ✘ You avoid backend or data complexity

• Modern frontend frameworks (React / Next.js)
• Backend systems (Node, Python, Go, etc.)