Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Denari•Chicago, IL

19h•Hybrid

About The Position

Denari is hiring its first Forward Deployed Engineer to turn real-world partner problems into practical, working solutions. The role works directly with accounting firms to understand their operations, identify high-value opportunities, and build, configure, deploy, and maintain solutions using the Denari platform and agentic development tools. Solutions may include agent skills, document schemas, workflows, automations, targeted core-product improvements, integrations, prototypes, or lightweight applications. The position focuses on understanding the underlying need, choosing a pragmatic solution, delivering it, and demonstrating its value. The Founding Forward Deployed Engineer will also establish how the function operates: scoping engagements, prioritizing opportunities, measuring outcomes, monitoring deployments, making repeated work reusable, and bringing partner learnings into the product. The role reports directly to Denari’s CEO. This is a hybrid, partner-facing role based in Madison, with three days per week in the office and the rest of the week worked from a location of the employee’s choosing. The role includes frequent partner calls and direct work alongside accounting firms. Formal software engineering education or professional software engineering experience is not required; the company values technical resourcefulness, effective use of agentic tools, sound judgment, clear communication, and ownership of reliable outcomes.

Requirements

Exceptional communication skills and the ability to build trust with partners.
Curiosity and judgment to turn ambiguous business problems into concrete technical solutions.
Strong ownership, self-direction, and comfort operating without a predefined playbook.
A pragmatic mindset and ability to judge when to configure, automate, build, or solve a problem without software.
Confidence working across a broad range of systems, tools, and problem types.
Substantial experience using AI agents in day-to-day work.
Experience using agentic development tools such as Claude Code to build useful applications, automations, or internal tools.
Ability to measure outcomes and explain the value of delivered work.
Comfort working directly with customers and maintaining a high standard of responsiveness and professionalism.
Clear, honest, upfront communication.

Nice To Haves

Experience as a Technical Solutions Engineer in a complex software environment, combined with strong ability to build using AI development tools.
Background in solutions engineering, implementation, technical consulting, operations, product, accounting technology, or another hands-on customer-facing role.

Responsibilities

Work directly with partners to understand their operations, uncover problems, and identify opportunities where Denari can create measurable value.
Design, build, configure, deploy, and maintain solutions within the Denari platform.
Develop and customize agent skills and workflows in Denari Answers.
Configure document schemas, user workflows, and automations across the Denari platform.
Use agentic coding tools to build integrations, internal automations, prototypes, and lightweight sidecar applications when the platform alone is not the right solution.
Make targeted contributions to Denari’s core product when a small change can create meaningful partner value, with support from the engineering team as needed.
Define success measures before deployment and demonstrate the operational or financial value created afterward.
Monitor deployed solutions, respond to issues, and improve reliability over time.
Turn recurring partner needs into reusable skills, patterns, tooling, and product recommendations.
Communicate partner feedback and field observations to product, engineering, and company leadership.
Help other Denari teams work more efficiently, including by developing automations and tools for the partnerships team.
Establish playbooks, standards, and operating rhythms for future Forward Deployed Engineers.