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.

🖍️ 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

• 5+ 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!

🪅 Benefits

• Competitive base salary plus equity. Even though we’re a small startup, we offer competitive salaries and great equity.

• Parental leave and flexible return to work. After returning to work, primary carers can work 4-day weeks for 100% of their pay for the first twelve weeks. For secondary carers, we offer 10 days of leave at full pay.

• Flexible working hours. We’re office-first, but are flexible with hours and working from home when you need to.

• Base yourself with our U.S. team in a brand new WeWork office

• Monthly team lunches to celebrate our wins and enjoy each other's company outside the office.

• Ergonomic workspace. Sit-stand desks, ergonomic chairs, quiet spaces, and collaboration spaces to suit all kinds of working styles.