Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Denari•Madison, WI

19h•Hybrid

About The Position

Denari is hiring its first Forward Deployed Engineer to turn accounting-firm partners’ real business problems into working solutions. The role works directly with firms to understand their operations, identify high-value opportunities, and build, configure, deploy, and maintain solutions using the Denari platform. Solutions may include agent skills, document schemas, workflows, automations, targeted core-product improvements, integrations, prototypes, or lightweight applications. This is not a traditional software engineering role, and formal software engineering education or experience is not required. Denari seeks a technically confident, resourceful builder who can use agentic development tools to solve business problems, navigate ambiguity, test work, and own outcomes. The role involves determining what partners actually need, choosing a pragmatic solution, delivering it, and demonstrating its value. As Denari’s founding FDE, this person will also establish how the function operates: scoping engagements, prioritizing opportunities, measuring outcomes, monitoring deployments, turning one-off work into reusable capabilities, and bringing field learning back into the product. The position reports directly to Denari’s CEO. The role is hybrid and based in Madison, with three days per week in the office and the remainder worked from a location of the employee’s choosing. It is partner-facing and includes substantial time on calls with accounting firms and working alongside them directly.

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 the ability to decide 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 responsiveness and professionalism.
Clear, honest, and 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 for Denari to 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 unlock 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 when something breaks, and improve reliability over time.
Turn repeated partner needs into reusable skills, patterns, tooling, and product recommendations.
Communicate partner feedback and field observations clearly to product, engineering, and company leadership.
Help other Denari teams move faster, including by developing automations and tools for the partnerships team.
Establish the playbooks, standards, and operating rhythms that future Forward Deployed Engineers will inherit.