D
Founding Engineer
Accepting applicationsDecky · Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area
Full-Time Entry AIaiaterf
Posted
2d ago
Category
Test
Experience
Entry
Country
United States
We're hiring our first dedicated engineer. You'll be the 4th employee — building the AI pipeline, web app, Chrome extension, and API that enterprise customers are already using.
2% equity, direct access to both founders, and the kind of ownership most engineers don't get until they start their own company.
Company momentum
Traction - Paying customers + inbound from large enterprises
Team size - You will be the 4th employee on the team
What is Decky
Every deck on brand, in minutes — AI-powered presentation automation built for the way enterprise teams actually work.
Sales and customer success teams spend hours manually building decks from templates. Decky fixes that. Connect your existing Google Slides or PowerPoint template, feed it your data, and Decky generates polished, on-brand presentations automatically.
We're a small team of three, the product is live and in customers' hands, and we're actively raising our pre-seed round. We've already closed enough to bring on a full-time engineer — you'd be the 4th employee. We're not pre-product, pre-revenue, or pre-customer. We're at the stage where the right engineer joining now shapes what this becomes — and shares meaningfully in what it's worth.
What you'll actually build
AI pipeline for template parsing & intelligent slide generation
Web app, MCP, and API surface used in production today
Integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and data sources customers already live in
Admin dashboards, usage analytics, and brand compliance tooling
The infra that lets this scale from 1,000 users to millions of enterprise users
We work across the modern AI tooling ecosystem and move with the frontier.
Day to day, that means multi-model routing, RAG pipelines grounded in brand data and templates, agentic workflows that parse/plan/generate end-to-end, and fine-tuning for brand voice and layout constraints.
You should be comfortable with LLM APIs, orchestration frameworks, vector DBs, evals, and observability tooling.
Your first 90 days
Days 1–30
Get deep in the product
Learn the codebase end-to-end, ship your first real feature, and talk directly to customers. No orientation theater.
Days 31–60
Own a meaningful surface
Take full ownership of a core product area — likely the generation pipeline or enterprise integration layer — and start making architectural decisions.
Days 61–90
Shape what comes next
You're in the room for product strategy. Your instincts about what to build — and what not to — are actively shaping the roadmap.
Who we're looking for
Obsessed. Not enthusiastic — obsessed.
You read AI papers on weekends
Side projects that actually ship
Can't stop thinking about the product
Comfortable with ambiguity
Enterprise empathy — talks to customers without being asked
Comfortable at any layer of the stack — knows when to go deep vs. move fast
Has built things that real users relied on
Experience with LLMs, document generation, or presentation tooling is a genuine plus. But we care more about the quality of your thinking than how closely your resume matches this list.
Nice to have
Experience working in an enterprise context where brand compliance is a legal requirement
Experience with LLMs, document generation, or presentation tooling
Background in early-stage startups or founding engineering roles
Compensation
2% equity — 4-year vest, 1-year cliff, path to Head of Engineering
$80K salary — startup-stage, scales with funding milestones
Direct access to both founders — no layers, no middlemen
Who you'll work with
Mike Cornelius
Co-founder & CEO
Previously scaled a company from zero to significant revenue. Leads product direction, go-to-market, and the enterprise relationships that are already knocking on our door.
Graham Foster
Co-founder & CTO
The architect behind Decky's core engine and your direct manager. Graham owns the technical roadmap — from AI pipelines to infrastructure — and will be your primary collaborator on everything you build.
You'll report directly to Graham and work closely with Mike on the product and customer side. No layers, no middlemen — just two founders who want to build something great and need a third person obsessed enough to help them do it.
The honest part
This is not a 9-to-5. The salary is startup-stage — below what a company with a Series A budget would offer, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What we're offering instead is 2% equity in something that enterprise customers are already asking for, direct access to both founders, and the kind of ownership most engineers don't get until they start their own company. If you're wired for that trade, we want to hear from you.
How to apply
You can submit through LinkedIn but reaching out to us directly with an impressive way for us to understand your capabilities and interest is always a way to stand out.
Show more Show less
2% equity, direct access to both founders, and the kind of ownership most engineers don't get until they start their own company.
Company momentum
Traction - Paying customers + inbound from large enterprises
Team size - You will be the 4th employee on the team
What is Decky
Every deck on brand, in minutes — AI-powered presentation automation built for the way enterprise teams actually work.
Sales and customer success teams spend hours manually building decks from templates. Decky fixes that. Connect your existing Google Slides or PowerPoint template, feed it your data, and Decky generates polished, on-brand presentations automatically.
We're a small team of three, the product is live and in customers' hands, and we're actively raising our pre-seed round. We've already closed enough to bring on a full-time engineer — you'd be the 4th employee. We're not pre-product, pre-revenue, or pre-customer. We're at the stage where the right engineer joining now shapes what this becomes — and shares meaningfully in what it's worth.
What you'll actually build
AI pipeline for template parsing & intelligent slide generation
Web app, MCP, and API surface used in production today
Integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and data sources customers already live in
Admin dashboards, usage analytics, and brand compliance tooling
The infra that lets this scale from 1,000 users to millions of enterprise users
We work across the modern AI tooling ecosystem and move with the frontier.
Day to day, that means multi-model routing, RAG pipelines grounded in brand data and templates, agentic workflows that parse/plan/generate end-to-end, and fine-tuning for brand voice and layout constraints.
You should be comfortable with LLM APIs, orchestration frameworks, vector DBs, evals, and observability tooling.
Your first 90 days
Days 1–30
Get deep in the product
Learn the codebase end-to-end, ship your first real feature, and talk directly to customers. No orientation theater.
Days 31–60
Own a meaningful surface
Take full ownership of a core product area — likely the generation pipeline or enterprise integration layer — and start making architectural decisions.
Days 61–90
Shape what comes next
You're in the room for product strategy. Your instincts about what to build — and what not to — are actively shaping the roadmap.
Who we're looking for
Obsessed. Not enthusiastic — obsessed.
You read AI papers on weekends
Side projects that actually ship
Can't stop thinking about the product
Comfortable with ambiguity
Enterprise empathy — talks to customers without being asked
Comfortable at any layer of the stack — knows when to go deep vs. move fast
Has built things that real users relied on
Experience with LLMs, document generation, or presentation tooling is a genuine plus. But we care more about the quality of your thinking than how closely your resume matches this list.
Nice to have
Experience working in an enterprise context where brand compliance is a legal requirement
Experience with LLMs, document generation, or presentation tooling
Background in early-stage startups or founding engineering roles
Compensation
2% equity — 4-year vest, 1-year cliff, path to Head of Engineering
$80K salary — startup-stage, scales with funding milestones
Direct access to both founders — no layers, no middlemen
Who you'll work with
Mike Cornelius
Co-founder & CEO
Previously scaled a company from zero to significant revenue. Leads product direction, go-to-market, and the enterprise relationships that are already knocking on our door.
Graham Foster
Co-founder & CTO
The architect behind Decky's core engine and your direct manager. Graham owns the technical roadmap — from AI pipelines to infrastructure — and will be your primary collaborator on everything you build.
You'll report directly to Graham and work closely with Mike on the product and customer side. No layers, no middlemen — just two founders who want to build something great and need a third person obsessed enough to help them do it.
The honest part
This is not a 9-to-5. The salary is startup-stage — below what a company with a Series A budget would offer, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What we're offering instead is 2% equity in something that enterprise customers are already asking for, direct access to both founders, and the kind of ownership most engineers don't get until they start their own company. If you're wired for that trade, we want to hear from you.
How to apply
You can submit through LinkedIn but reaching out to us directly with an impressive way for us to understand your capabilities and interest is always a way to stand out.
Show more Show less