Senior Product Designer

About Partly

Partly is a rapidly growing tech company headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional offices in London, Christchurch, and Auckland. We develop AI infrastructure for the global repair sector, focusing initially on the $2 trillion automotive market. Our flagship AI model, Interpreter, uniquely understands vehicle damage and required repair parts, supporting thousands of repair businesses worldwide. Backed by prominent investors and founded by former Rocket Lab engineers, we've experienced significant growth and are dedicated to cultivating a culture where employees can excel.

Role Overview

As a Senior Product Designer at Partly, you will be essential to advancing the user experience of our product to meet the expectations of thousands of new customers while integrating an AI-driven approach centered on our Interpreter model. This fast-paced role requires balancing quality and speed, working collaboratively with engineering and product teams across multiple projects and product areas.

Key Responsibilities

• Transform complex, data-heavy workflows, such as managing extensive vehicle part catalogs with over 500,000 SKUs, into reliable, user-trusted experiences that keep pace with rapid development.
• Design intuitive search and discovery features where accuracy is critical, as incorrect recommendations can have safety implications.
• Ensure high-quality design outcomes, taking ownership of your contributions while adhering to product leadership direction.
• Develop scalable design system components, patterns, and guidelines that empower engineers and AI-assisted coding tools to deliver consistent and effective experiences.
• Write early design artifacts such as job stories, user flows, and context-rich documentation to facilitate efficient engineering without delays.
• Provide timely design solutions across multiple concurrent projects, supporting global teams particularly in New Zealand, the UK, and the US.
• Design for real-world conditions including edge cases, error states, and actual data scenarios beyond ideal prototypes.
• Deliver constructive critiques to elevate the work of designers, product managers, and engineers, setting high standards through your own deliverables.
• Grow into expanded responsibilities by owning complete feature workstreams, broader design system segments, and ultimately entire product areas or customer groups based on demonstrated results.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• At least 5 years of senior-level product design experience working on intricate software products.
• A strong portfolio showcasing designs that have successfully been realized in production environments, addressing real states and complexities.
• Expertise in interaction design, UX design, and rapid prototyping to explore and communicate concepts effectively.
• Experience building or contributing to design systems widely adopted by engineers and other teams.
• Proven ability to make thoughtful trade-offs within defined problem scopes and articulate these decisions clearly.
• Deep curiosity and empathy for professional users such as repair technicians and parts sellers, who demand frictionless, high-quality workflows.
• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills to present rationale and influence cross-functional collaborators.

Desirable Skills and Attributes

• Contributions to a design system where your work was embraced organically by other teams.
• Recent track record of increasing responsibility beyond title changes, demonstrating trust earned through results.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted design workflows integrated into your routine practice.
• Comfort collaborating directly with engineers without formal design review steps, making in-the-moment decisions and accountability.
• Reflective mindset with specific examples of learning from past shipped projects to improve.
• Experience designing complex, data-rich B2B workflows.
• Collaborative experience with research teams or using quantitative data to validate designs.
• Exposure to domains like marketplaces, catalogs, e-commerce, or supply chain management.
• Background working in fast-growing startup environments.

Work Philosophy

We value proactive designers who launch early versions and empower engineers rather than awaiting perfect briefs. We prioritize addressing real-world complexities and edge cases over mere polish. We trust individuals who continuously earn expanded ownership by demonstrating capability, focusing on craft, speed, and sound judgment rather than formal strategy ownership.

Challenges and Opportunities

• Mastering the complex domain of vehicle fitment, parts taxonomy, and catalog management quickly.
• Meeting the high expectations and stringent workflow requirements of professional customers within a global, multilingual context.
• Enabling rapid, engineering-led shipping cycles that often proceed without dedicated design presence, raising baseline quality through design systems and standards.
• Making impactful improvements without impeding fast product iteration, recognizing when design refinement justifies time spent.
• Thriving in a small team with ambitious goals and a culture valuing speed and adaptability.

Additional Information

Partly connects team members to the nearest office for onboarding and covers travel and accommodation for quarterly global gatherings. Relocation assistance is available for those moving to join our teams.

Benefits

• Daily catered healthy lunches available at offices in Auckland, Christchurch, London, and Austin, including snacks and drinks.
• An annual wellness allowance of $1,500 AUD or local equivalent for health-related expenses such as gym memberships or therapy.
• Generous family leave with three months fully paid parental leave and flexible phased return arrangements.
• Modern, architect-designed office spaces fostering collaboration and convenience.
• Commuting support including paid parking or transportation allowances for office commuters attending four or more days weekly.
• Office-first work culture with flexible schedules and high trust, enabling efficient collaboration and work-life balance.
• Immediate access to annual and sick leave without accrual waits, with trust to self-manage time off.
• Regular social events including happy hours, lunches, quarterly celebrations, and annual offsites to strengthen team bonds.
• Charitable donation matching, enhancing contributions to recommended nonprofits.
• Equity participation through share options vested over four years with a one-year cliff and a nominal strike price, granting true ownership from day one.