Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Accounting runs on software built in the ’90s. We’re building what comes next — real product on hard problems, a small team, and a big industry. Come build with us.

You’ll build and ship on hard problems from day one — not sit in meetings about a backlog. Small team, fast pace, real ownership.

Accounting runs on software built in the '90s. The opportunity to modernize it is enormous, and we’re building what comes next.

We build alongside Lucida, our own accounting practice, so everything we ship is tested against how firms actually work.

We’re a small team building serious software for an industry that has waited a long time for it. A few things we care about:

We'd rather put a real thing in front of real firms and learn from it than debate it for a quarter. Work reaches customers in days, and the feedback loop is short enough that you feel the impact of what you built.

You’ll scope, build, and follow features through end to end — from the accounting workflow behind them to the last edge case in production. Small team, wide surface area, and real ownership from day one.

Accounting runs deep, and we take it seriously. You’ll work close to Lucida, our own CPA firm, and learn how partners, preparers, and reviewers actually operate so everything we build holds up on real engagements.

A short, respectful process designed to show you real work and give you a clear answer quickly.

01

A 30-minute conversation with the team about your background, what you're looking for, and what we're building. No trick questions.

02

We work through a realistic problem together, close to what you'd actually do here. We care how you think, not whether you memorized an algorithm.

03

Spend time with the people you'd work with every day and dig into the product, the firm, and the industry we're setting out to modernize.

04

We move quickly. If it's a fit on both sides, you'll get a clear offer and a straightforward path to your first day.

Chicago, IL

Full time

Denari is building the modern software stack for accounting firms: an AI-powered platform that unifies client collaboration, document management, workflow automation, and financial insights in one place.

We’re a small, well-funded team with a built-in proving ground. Our sister company, Lucida Tax + Accounting, uses what we build every day, so we hear how a solution landed within hours of deploying it.

We’re hiring Denari’s first Forward Deployed Engineer to turn real partner problems into working solutions.

You’ll work directly with accounting firms to understand how they operate, identify their highest-value problems, and rapidly build, configure, and deploy solutions using the Denari platform. That could mean creating an agent skill in Denari Answers, configuring a document schema, designing a workflow, contributing a targeted improvement to the core product, or building a lightweight application alongside it.

This is not a traditional software engineering role, and formal software engineering experience is not required. We’re looking for a technically confident, resourceful builder who can use agentic development tools to solve real business problems. You should be able to think like an engineer—breaking down ambiguity, understanding systems, testing your work, and owning outcomes—without necessarily having followed a conventional engineering career path.

The objective isn’t simply to deliver what someone requests. It’s to understand what they actually need, determine the most pragmatic way to solve it, get the solution into their hands,…