Forward Deployed Engineer

Note: Partly is headquartered in the UK, with a Product and Engineering HQ in Christchurch, New Zealand, and an early presence in San Francisco, USA. If you are based outside of a Hub, we will fly you to the nearest Hub for 1 week per quarter for our “Season Openers” (we pay for your travel and accommodation). This role is to be based in San Francisco.

🚀 Our story

Partly's mission is to connect the world's parts and we're doing that by building the first global platform for replacement parts, starting with auto parts. Our big vision is to accelerate the world toward a sustainable future where anyone can fix anything.

Founded by ex-Rocket Lab engineers, we utilise cutting-edge technology to solve challenging but exciting problems that make a huge impact in a $1.9 trillion industry. We've more than tripled our team over the last 12 months and expect to double in size again over the coming 12 months. We're a global team spanning both Europe and Australasia.

We provide a scalable digital infrastructure solution to some of the world's largest businesses and the most exciting startups. Partly's solutions are integrated across hundreds of companies globally, providing the backbone for cataloguing and managing parts online.

Our investors in Blackbird Ventures (Canva, CultureAmp etc.), Square Peg, Octopus Ventures, Icehouse, Peter Beck (Rocket Lab), Akshay Kothari (Notion Co-Founder) and Dylan Field (Figma Co-Founder).

We're continuing to build a world-class team and ensuring Partly is a place where people can do the best work of their lives. We're proud of the culture we've built at Partly, and our values are lived throughout every experience.

Want to learn more about the problems we're solving and the culture we're building at Partly? Hear directly from our team here: https://shorturl.at/iAFUX

🖍️ This role

In this role, you will work alongside other members of our product & engineering team to tackle hard, exciting problems and build beautiful software.

🚗💻 What will you do (Forward Deployed Engineer)

• You’ll embed with customers in your local market, onsite where needed, to deeply understand their workflows, constraints, and what “success” looks like in the real world.

• You’ll lead technical discovery, solution design, and delivery for high-impact customer deployments: integrations, data onboarding, workflow configuration, and new product capabilities required to unlock value.

• You’ll build and ship production code that extends Partly’s core SaaS + API platform often in tight feedback loops with users without compromising reliability, security, or maintainability.

• You’ll connect the dots between customer needs and our product/engineering roadmap: translate ambiguous problems into clear requirements, scoped milestones, and measurable outcomes.

• You’ll be the hands-on technical owner for deployments post-launch: troubleshoot live issues, improve observability, harden edge cases, and drive continuous improvement.

• You’ll become an expert in the complex (and messy) auto parts domain and help customers modernise how they source, identify, and transact parts.

🧩 Your skills

• 3+ years building and shipping complex software in production environments.

• Strong customer empathy and product thinking: you can turn real-world workflows into pragmatic solutions.

• Comfortable owning the full lifecycle: discovery → design → build → deploy → operate → iterate.

• Strong foundations in engineering fundamentals: APIs, testing, system design, data structures, and debugging.

• Ability to work across boundaries: you can collaborate with customer IT teams, ops teams, and internal product/engineering stakeholders with clear written + verbal communication.

• Experience integrating with external systems (APIs, webhooks, EDI/FTP/file feeds, SSO) and dealing with imperfect data.

• Able to operate in ambiguous environments and make good tradeoffs quickly (time-to-value vs long-term maintainability).

• (Bonus) Experience in forward-deployed / solutions engineering / technical consulting / implementation roles.

• (Bonus) Experience with automotive parts, repairer/supplier workflows, or adjacent B2B marketplaces.

• (Bonus) Experience with Rust (or strong interest in learning it).

Please note: if you don't have all the skills/experience listed above but believe you could be outstanding in this role, please still consider applying. Many folks, especially those from underrepresented or marginalised groups, often count themselves out. Please allow us to learn more about you and why you're exceptional!

Our Benefits

• Healthy, Catered Lunches - Enjoy fresh, healthy lunches every workday in our Auckland, Christchurch, London and San Francisco offices. With no meal prep needed, you can eat, connect, and refuel with your team. (And yes, snacks and drinks are always on hand.)

• Healthy Body, Healthy Mind - We care about performing at our peak. Every team member gets a $1,500 annual wellness allowance (or local equivalent) on a Partly-branded card. Use it on things such gym memberships, rock climbing, physio, massage, GP visits, prescriptions; anything that you or your family, need!

• Family Comes First - Primary caregivers receive 3 months of fully paid parental leave, plus a flexible return-to-work (four days on full pay for your first three months back).

• Getting Here Is On Us - If you commute to a Partly office or co-working space, choose from a paid 24/7 car park or commute allowance. One less thing to think about!

• Workspaces That Inspire - Our brand new, architecturally designed offices are built for collaboration and creativity, with great coffee, social spaces, and some of the best cafes a few steps away.

• Office-First with Flexibility - In cities where we have an office (Christchurch, Auckland, London, San Francisco), we default there every day. This let's us move faster, make better decisions and build strong relationships. We also operate with a very high trust environment, so you can manage your time around your life, and flex your schedule to get your best work done.

• We Celebrate Together - From weekly happy hours and monthly lunches to quarterly season openers and an annual global offsite, we make time to connect, celebrate, and have fun as one team.