Product Engineer

Denari; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) with match

Paid vacation and holidays (20 days)

Job summary

Denari is building an AI-powered platform for accounting firms, blending client collaboration, document management, and financial insights. This hybrid role in Madison lets you work three days in the office and two remotely, collaborating with founders and real accounting firms to ship impactful features.

You’ll leverage AI tooling to accelerate output, contribute to architecture, and own parts of multiple products from day one.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals; years of experience aren’t the main focus.
• Genuine curiosity about AI tooling; experience using LLMs or agents is a plus.
• Comfort with ambiguity and small-team dynamics.
• Clear, honest, upfront communication.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship features across multiple products and codebases.
• Use LLMs and AI agents throughout your workflow where they accelerate output.
• Participate in architectural decisions and help define best practices for scalability, maintainability, and security.
• Work directly with founders and with real accounting firms using the product.
• Wear multiple hats; we’re a small startup and the most interesting work often sits between job descriptions.
• Talk directly with customers: join calls with accounting firms, hear problems, and ship features they care about.

Skills

Software engineering fundamentals

AI tooling curiosity

Ambiguity tolerance

Clear communication

Job description

What We’re Building

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 feature landed within hours of shipping it.

Your Impact Here Is Only Limited by Your Initiative

We are genuinely open to change. If you have an idea and you’re willing to put in the effort, we will back you; whether that’s a new product direction, a better internal process, or rethinking how a whole workflow should work.

AI has also changed what counts as "hard." Things that used to be too expensive or time-consuming to attempt are now on the table, and we use that to stay flexible in a way that empowers people. If something was off-limits before because it was "too difficult," that’s an invitation to question it.

The Tools You’ll Actually Get to Use

We invest heavily in AI tooling and efficiency engineering, and our agents are harnessed directly into the software we work in, which compounds how fast we can move:

• AI development: Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, and Conductor for running parallel agent workflows

• Modern stack: Next, oRPC, TanStack-everything, and other current-generation tooling

• Connected workflow: Linear for project management and Grain for meeting intelligence, both wired into our internal agents

• Developer experience: 1Password integrated directly into development secrets injection, with seeding, tests, and more wired into Conductor (we care about our dx a lot).

A lot of companies don’t get this luxury. We do, and we constantly try new things. If a better tool ships next month, we’ll probably be experimenting with it the week after.

How We Work Together

This is a hybrid role based in Madison. You’ll spend three days a week in the office with the team, and the rest of the week you’ll work from wherever you do your best thinking. Day to day, the whole team (in-office and remote) shares a digital engineering office in Gather. Drop by someone’s desk to talk through a problem, or set focus time when you need to go heads down and everyone will see it at a glance.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and ship features across multiple products and codebases

• Use LLMs and AI agents throughout your workflow wherever they accelerate output

• Participate in architectural decisions and help define best practices for scalability, maintainability, and security

• Work directly with founders and with real accounting firms using the product

• Wear multiple hats; we’re a small startup and the most interesting work often sits between job descriptions

• Talk directly with customers: you’ll join calls with the accounting firms using our products, hear problems firsthand, and ship features they care about

We Love It When

• You disagree with us and say so, because you care about getting it right

• You take ownership of a problem end to end instead of waiting for permission

• You try a new tool or approach on a Friday and demo it on Monday

• You ask "why is this hard?" and discover it doesn’t have to be anymore

• You help a teammate get unstuck even when it’s not your area

Our Culture

• We care that our co-workers care, even when we disagree. We’d rather hash out a real disagreement than watch someone quietly check out.

• We’re not AI-pilled, but we think AI is clearly a complete game-changer. We’re just another crew trying to figure it out, which means we stay open and experiment constantly.

• Assertiveness and accountability. Speak up, commit, follow through, and own the outcome either way.

• Collaboration and flexibility. Small team, multiple products, lots of context-switching. We support each other through it.

• Supportive by default. When someone’s stuck, struggling, or stretching into something new, the team shows up.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong software engineering fundamentals (how you think matters more to us than your years of experience)

• Genuine curiosity about AI tooling, with experience using LLMs or agents in your workflow a plus

• Comfort with ambiguity and small-team dynamics

• Clear, honest, upfront communication

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance

• 401(k) with match

• 20 days PTO plus paid holidays