Senior Product Designer

Note: Partly is headquartered in the UK, with a Product and Engineering base in Christchurch, and an early presence in San Francisco. If you are not based in Christchurch, we will fly you to HQ for 2 weeks for onboarding, as well as 1 week per quarter for our “Season Openers” (we pay for your travel and accommodation). If you are relocating to Christchurch from NZ or from overseas, we can also assist with relocation costs.

🚀 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 towards a sustainable future where waste is eliminated and all replacement parts are universally searchable, accessible and available to all.

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

As a Senior Product Designer at Partly, you will take full ownership of large, complex product areas end-to-end — from discovery and strategy through prototyping, iteration, and delivery. You will define elegant, scalable, and intuitive experiences in a data-rich, mission-critical domain, working across disciplines with Product, Engineering, Research, and Customer teams. You will help shape not only what we build, but how and why we build it. This role requires strong product judgment, deep user empathy, and a bias toward action in a fast-moving, startup environment where the bar for quality and impact is exceptionally high.

Partly values people who think first principles, act like owners, and deliver results with clarity and speed. You’ll contribute to the broader design culture by pushing for excellence, mentoring peers, and ensuring design decisions are rooted in real user needs and business outcomes. This is not a comfort role — it’s for designers who thrive in ambiguity, influence strategy, and drive measurable impact.

💻 What will you do

• Own problem spaces end-to-end
  
  
  

Lead discovery, framing, exploration, and delivery for complex product experience areas. Identify the right problems to solve, not just how to solve them.

• Design and ship high-quality experiences
  
  
  

Create clear, intuitive flows and polished interfaces that make complex systems feel simple. Produce prototypes and high-fidelity designs that are ready for engineering and scale.

• Partner deeply with Product and Engineering
  
  
  

Work closely with your PM and engineering counterparts to define strategy, break down initiatives into achievable milestones, and deliver impact with speed and quality.

• Exercise strong product judgment
  
  
  

Make thoughtful trade-offs between speed, quality, scope, and long-term system health. Reason from first principles and clearly articulate your decisions.

• Represent the voice of the buyer
  
  
  

Use research, data, and direct customer insight to ground decisions. Advocate for customer needs in prioritisation and product discussions.

• Raise the bar for craft and consistency
  
  
  

Set and model high standards for visual design, interaction quality, and system coherence. Contribute to evolving patterns, guidelines, and systems.

• Collaborate and influence across teams
  
  
  

Facilitate workshops, critiques, and working sessions to align stakeholders and drive clarity. Communicate progress and decisions clearly through narratives, prototypes, and artefacts.

• Contribute beyond your immediate scope
  
  
  

Actively participate in design critique, mentor other designers through feedback, and contribute to a culture of learning, ownership, and high standards.

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

🔎 What We’re Looking For

• Significant experience designing and shipping complex software experiences in a product-driven environment
• A portfolio demonstrating strong design fundamentals, polished UI craft, and clear product thinking
• A track record of independently driving work from discovery through launch
• Fluency in interaction design and prototyping to explore, test, and communicate nuanced ideas
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to design solutions that scale beyond a single feature
• Confidence working with ambiguity and shaping direction, not just executing requirements
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence cross-functional partners and explain rationale clearly
• A high sense of ownership, urgency, and accountability for outcomes, not just outputs
  
  
  

Optional (but valuable)

• Experience working on workflow-heavy, data-dense, or technically complex products
• Experience collaborating closely with research or using data to validate design decisions
• Experience contributing to or evolving design systems
  
  
  

🥷 Your skills

• Senior-level product design experience.
  
  
  

You’ve owned complex product areas and shipped meaningful outcomes, not just features.

• Strong product and business judgment.
  
  
  

You reason from first principles, weigh trade-offs, and focus on impact over polish for its own sake.

• Exceptional collaboration skills.
  
  
  

You’re a trusted partner to PMs and Engineers and can influence without authority.

• High design craft and attention to detail.
  
  
  

Your work sets a standard others learn from.

• Comfort with ambiguity and speed.
  
  
  

You move fast, make calls, and iterate without waiting for perfect information.

• Thoughtful adoption of modern design workflows.
  
  
  

You actively evaluate and apply new tools and practices, including AI-assisted design, where they meaningfully improve speed, quality, or leverage, and avoid them where they don’t.

• (Bonus) Experience in B2B, marketplace, or complex systems
• (Bonus) Experience contributing to or evolving design systems
  
  
  

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

• High trust, low process and no bureaucracy. We hire exceptional people whose judgment we trust. This means we proactively remove any process or rules that slow us down (for example, our expense policy is simply the “red face test”).
• Competitive base salary + equity. We offer competitive salaries and generous equity options for all full-time employees, ensuring everyone shares in the financial upside when we win.
• Flexible working hours. Choose when to work based on what time you’re most effective (no mandatory or set hours). We combine flexibility with an office-first approach (in cities where we have critical mass, i.e. London, Christchurch, Auckland). ****
• Focus Days. Two days per week, with zero meetings, dedicated solely to uninterrupted deep work
• Take time when you need it. We don’t ask questions or care if people have a negative leave balance. We work extremely hard and trust our team to take the time they need to recharge.
• Offices in Christchurch CBD and on Auckland’s Karangahape Road. We invest heavily in our offices (standing desks, healthy snacks, quality coffee, drinks on tap) to ensure they’re places people are excited by, where they build relationships and get their best work done.
• Learn from the best. Whether it’s during a ‘Lunch n Learn’ or hearing from a unicorn CEO at a Fireside chat, you’ll have the opportunity to constantly learn from the world’s best.
• Quarterly season openers & annual global offsite. Connect regularly at the nearest centralised location for a week of collaboration, big-picture planning and team events.
• Team connection. Monthly team lunches, celebrating our wins, happy hours and more!
• Parental leave and flexible return to work. Do what works for you. Primary carers can return with 4-day weeks (on 100% pay for the first 12 weeks). Secondary carers get 10 days full pay.
• Payroll Giving: We encourage generous giving and donate to the high-impact charities you support