Senior/Staff Product Manager, NZ, Infrastructure APIs & Developer Ecosystem

About Partly

Partly is building the global infrastructure to connect replacement parts, beginning with auto parts, and aims to help the world move toward a future where repairs are easier and more sustainable. The company was started by former Rocket Lab engineers and uses advanced technology to tackle complex problems in a large industry. It has grown quickly over the past year and operates with a distributed team across Europe and Australasia. Partly supports major businesses and fast-growing startups with digital infrastructure for cataloguing and managing parts online. The company is backed by investors such as Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, Octopus Ventures, Icehouse, Peter Beck, Akshay Kothari, and Dylan Field.

Role overview

Partly is hiring a Principal or Staff Product Manager to lead Infrastructure APIs and the Developer Ecosystem. In this role, you will own the product that makes Partly's infrastructure usable by customers and external systems. You will be responsible for Partly Rails as a transactional product, the external API program, and the broader developer ecosystem that expands Partly's reach without direct involvement in every integration.

This role sits at the intersection of platform product management and developer experience. You will help ensure the core workflow is reliable, auditable, and scalable, while also building the portal, documentation, partner ecosystem, and API evolution needed for others to build on Partly's infrastructure. The company is looking for someone who already works quickly with AI-assisted development, builds prototypes early, and uses real signals to make decisions within days rather than weeks.

What you will own

• Partly Rails, covering the full transactional job flow from creation to estimation, procurement, reconciliation, and closure, with responsibility for product design, reliability, and value delivery.
• The external integration API program, including governance, versioning rules, and standards that define how outside systems connect to Partly.
• The developer portal and overall developer experience, including documentation, tooling, sandbox environments, and the path from first API call to production use.
• The developer ecosystem, including identifying, enabling, and retaining integration partners who build on Partly's infrastructure.
• Agentic API evolution, ensuring the API layer is designed for autonomous, context-aware AI agents as well as traditional system integrations.

What you will do

• Set and evolve the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the infrastructure and developer platform.
• Own the metrics that measure the health of the Rails transaction layer and the growth of the ecosystem, and use them to guide decisions.
• Coordinate go-to-market activity for API launches, ecosystem initiatives, and integration partnerships.
• Take full accountability for the product outcomes, including both wins and failures.
• Stay closely connected with developers and integration partners, using their feedback as a regular input to prioritisation.
• Separate feature requests from the underlying problem that developers need solved in order to ship successfully.
• Combine direct feedback with API usage data, telemetry, and support signals to make informed decisions.
• Build prototypes of API experiences, documentation flows, and developer tools yourself using AI-assisted methods.
• Use prototypes as testable hypotheses and validate them with real integrators before formalising the specification.
• Work hands-on with data by defining metrics, building dashboards, querying logs, and interpreting signals directly.
• Partner with engineering leadership to balance platform capability, developer experience, and technical longevity.
• Align partner success, GTM, and support functions around the ecosystem strategy.
• Communicate roadmap updates and deprecation plans clearly and early so external developers can plan with confidence.
• Design APIs and instrumentation with agent-based usage in mind as a current requirement, not a future nice-to-have.
• Define what successful agent consumption looks like in terms of reliability, observability, graceful failure, and context accuracy.
• Think through system-wide impacts when any part of the API surface changes.
• Set a high standard for API design, documentation quality, and developer experience across the company.
• Help define what an excellent external developer program should look like as the ecosystem scales.

What you bring

We are looking for someone with deep product ownership experience in platform or infrastructure environments, strong technical and commercial judgement, and a builder mindset that favors fast experimentation and real-world validation.

• Experience owning developer-facing API products, including design, versioning, governance, and lifecycle management.
• Experience building or scaling a developer ecosystem, such as partner programs, integration networks, or developer communities.
• A strong understanding of developer experience as a discipline, including onboarding, documentation, and tooling across different stages of maturity.
• The ability to speak credibly with engineers about API architecture and translate technical needs into business impact.
• At least 5 years of experience owning platform or infrastructure products with measurable accountability for adoption, not just delivery.
• Hands-on comfort with rapid prototyping using AI-assisted tools, LLM-based development, or code.
• A strong analytical approach, with the ability to define metrics, build views, read data, and act on insights independently.

Strong signals

• Experience creating APIs for agentic or LLM-driven use, beyond conventional system-to-system integrations.
• Exposure to transactional or workflow APIs in fields such as payments, logistics, supply chain, or insurance.
• Experience leading a partner or ISV program at scale.
• Comfort treating reliability, observability, and non-functional requirements as primary product concerns.
• Founder experience or early-stage experience at a platform-first startup that scaled significantly.
• A track record of abandoning or reshaping something you once strongly supported, with a clear explanation of why.

Bonus experience

• Knowledge of the automotive aftermarket, collision repair, or insurance claims space.
• Experience scaling developer platforms across multiple countries or regions.
• Experience applying product-led growth techniques to developer or API products.
• Experience building or operating products with meaningful automation or agentic components.

How you are expected to work

Partly is looking for someone who moves quickly, takes ownership, and makes decisions with evidence. The ideal candidate will be comfortable shipping a sandbox or prototype first, learning from real users, and prioritising the most important operational or technical issue instead of only reacting to feature requests. The role also requires fluency across the developer-facing layer and the infrastructure underneath it, with the ability to shorten the distance between intent and outcome.

Location and onboarding

Partly has offices in London, Christchurch, and Austin. Wherever you are based, the company will connect you with the nearest office for onboarding and will fly you in to join the full team for quarterly Season Opener gatherings, including travel and accommodation. If you are relocating to join the company, relocation support may also be available.

Benefits

• Fresh, healthy lunches are provided every working day in the Auckland, Christchurch, London, and San Francisco offices, along with snacks and drinks.
• Each team member receives a yearly wellness allowance of $1,500 or the local equivalent on a Partly-branded card for wellness and health-related expenses, including gym, climbing, physio, massage, GP visits, prescriptions, and more for you or your family.
• Primary caregivers are eligible for 3 months of fully paid parental leave, along with a flexible return-to-work arrangement of four days on full pay for the first three months back.
• Employees commuting to a Partly office or co-working space can choose between a paid 24/7 car park or a commute allowance.
• The offices are newly designed to support collaboration and creativity, with good coffee, social spaces, and nearby cafes.
• Partly follows an office-first approach in Christchurch, Auckland, London, and San Francisco, while still allowing a high-trust level of schedule flexibility around personal life and productivity.
• The company regularly creates opportunities to connect and celebrate together through weekly happy hours, monthly lunches, quarterly Season Openers, and an annual global offsite.

Application note

Applicants who do not meet every requirement are still encouraged to consider the role if they believe they can make a strong contribution.