Denari
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer
Why it's interesting
The clearest sign yet that FDE is decoupling from the SWE pedigree: Denari's first FDE hire explicitly waives formal software-engineering experience and instead wants a "resourceful builder" who directs agentic tools like Claude Code. Contrarian on geo too — Madison, WI, hybrid 3 days, not another SF chatbot shop. The kicker is a captive sister firm (Lucida Tax + Accounting) that dogfoods every deploy, so you hear how a solution landed within hours. Reports to the CEO.
The role
Denari's first Forward Deployed Engineer, building the modern software stack for accounting firms — an AI platform unifying client collaboration, document management, workflow automation, and financial insights. Work directly with accounting-firm partners to scope their highest-value problems, then build/configure/deploy solutions on the Denari platform: agent skills in Denari Answers, document schemas, workflows, targeted core-product contributions, and lightweight sidecar apps via agentic coding tools. Also defines the FDE function's playbooks. Hybrid in Madison, WI (3 days in office); Partner Engineering; reports to CEO. Formal SWE experience not required. Verified on Denari's own Ashby board (comp not disclosed).
Applications go directly to the company. We curate; we don't broker.