Dark Deck

About the role

DarkDeck.ai is a Chicago-based AI company building secure, verifiable systems for high-stakes areas like law, cybersecurity, healthcare, research, and government. This is a Founder's Office position for an unusually capable student—not a programming role, and not an internship with made-up assignments. You'll work on real problems involving legal technology, partnerships, research, business development, evidence, and company strategy.

What You'll Do

• Research law firms, companies, attorneys, decision-makers, and potential partners.
• Help build and execute targeted outreach rather than sending generic mass emails.
• Prepare briefing notes before founder meetings and participate in calls when appropriate.
• Follow up with prospective partners and keep conversations organized and moving.
• Translate complicated legal, technical, or business information into clear summaries.
• Research legal-tech markets, AI adoption, competitors, and emerging opportunities.
• Help prepare pilot proposals, presentations, partnership materials, and special projects.
• Challenge assumptions when something does not make sense and bring better ideas to the table.

What I'm Looking For

• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Strong research skills and attention to detail.
• High initiative — you notice what needs to happen and start figuring out how to make it happen.
• Comfortable speaking with attorneys, executives, professors, researchers, and other professionals.
• Good judgment with sensitive or confidential information.
• Ability to distinguish facts, allegations, assumptions, and conclusions.
• Organized enough to manage multiple conversations and deadlines without constant reminders.
• Genuine interest in some combination of law, AI, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, business, policy, research, or technology.

Qualifications

• You do not need to know how to code.
• You do not need prior startup experience.
• Law students, pre-law students, business students, policy students, technically curious students, and people from unconventional backgrounds are all welcome to apply.

About the opportunity

DarkDeck is intentionally building a small team. If you perform well, the upside is that you will have substantially more visibility, responsibility, and influence than you would typically receive inside a large company. I want someone who eventually understands the business well enough to tell me when I'm wrong—not someone whose job is simply to agree with the founder. If you're curious, ambitious, intellectually honest, comfortable figuring things out without a playbook, and want to see what building an early-stage AI company actually looks like from the inside, I'd like to hear from you.