Platform Security Engineer, NZ
Partly · Christchurch
Note: Partly is headquartered in Austin, TX with offices in London, UK, Christchurch, NZ and Auckland, NZ. Wherever you're based, we'll connect you with your nearest office for onboarding, and fly you to join the full team for our quarterly "Season Openers" (we cover travel and accommodation). If you're relocating to join us, we can also assist with relocation costs.
🚀 Our Story
Partly is building the infrastructure for anyone to repair anything. We believe everything built should be repairable, and we're building frontier AI to put repair knowledge to work, starting with the $2tn automotive market.
Our model, Interpreter, is the first AI purpose-built to understand repair. Trained on 1M+ car models and 1B+ parts, it reads a repair job the way an estimator does, resolves damage into the exact purchasable part, and shows its reasoning with a confidence score. On real production jobs, an estimator working with Interpreter reaches 98.8% parts-list accuracy, against 92.1% with today's tools. It powers PartlyRepair, used by collision shops, workshops and suppliers to take the admin off the job; PartlyLabs, the agentic infrastructure enterprises use to deploy Interpreter across their own workflows; and a developer API.
Founded by ex-Rocket Lab engineers, we've raised a $50m Series B led by DST Global (Anthropic, Airbnb, Meta, TikTok, Spotify), with Blackbird Ventures, WNDR, Activant Capital, Icehouse Ventures, Square Peg, Airtree and Ecliptic Venture Capital. Hear it from the team: Why Partly exists and AI at Partly.
🖍️ This role
The Platform Security Engineer will own Partly's security posture while contributing to platform reliability, reporting to the Platform Lead.
This role combines infrastructure security with platform reliability—someone who can harden our systems while keeping them running. Not a pure "checkbox compliance" role; we need someone who can implement technical controls and work hands-on with infrastructure. You'll be the first dedicated security hire at Partly, building processes from scratch while partnering closely with our SRE team.
💻 What will you do
Keep Partly reliable and secure. Participate in the on-call rotation alongside the SRE team. Own security incident response planning and testing. Lead post-incident reviews for security-related incidents and participate in availability incidents. Build security event monitoring and alerting.
Own our security posture and compliance. Prepare for and pass security audits (ISO 27001, future SOC 2). Maintain continuous compliance through Vanta—ensuring controls are implemented, not just documented. Respond to enterprise customer security questionnaires. Maintain and communicate the risk register to engineering and leadership.
Harden our infrastructure. Implement the principle of least privilege across the stack—PostgreSQL roles for applications, Kubernetes RBAC refinement, ensuring applications only get the secrets they need. Drive network segmentation and zero-trust progress using Cilium network policies and Kyverno admission policies. Make production access read-only by default for developers.
Manage vulnerabilities systematically. Implement and operate our vulnerability scanning pipeline using Trivy, Renovate, and Falco. Own the vulnerability triage process—severity assessment, prioritization, tracking to resolution. Coordinate remediation with service owners and report on metrics and trends.
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/DPDdl
🥷 Your skills
(Preferred) 5+ years in security engineering, platform engineering, or SRE with a strong security focus. You've done this before and can hit the ground running with minimal hand-holding.
(Preferred) Hands-on Kubernetes security experience. You understand RBAC, network policies, and admission controllers. You've implemented security controls in production K8s environments.
Compliance framework experience. You've worked with at least one of ISO 27001, SOC 2, or PCI-DSS. You understand the difference between checkbox compliance and actually being secure.
Cloud security expertise. Strong understanding of cloud security principles. GCP experience preferred. You know how to secure cloud infrastructure.
Infrastructure-as-code practitioner. Experience with Terraform, ArgoCD, and GitOps workflows. You believe infrastructure changes should go through code review.
Clear communicator. Ability to communicate security risk to non-technical stakeholders. You can translate technical vulnerabilities into business risk.
(Bonus) CNCF security tooling experience. Cilium, Kyverno, Falco, or similar tools. Container security and supply chain security (SBOM, image signing).
(Bonus) Rust or Go experience. Our backend languages—helpful for understanding the systems you're securing and reviewing security-sensitive code.
Please note: If you don't have all the skills or experience listed above but believe you could be outstanding in this role, please still consider applying. Many people count themselves out. We'd love the chance to learn more about you and why you're exceptional.
🎡 Benefits
Healthy, Catered Lunches - Enjoy fresh, healthy lunches every workday in our Auckland, Christchurch, London, and Austin 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 as gym memberships, rock climbing, physical therapy, massage, doctor 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 plan (four days a week at full pay for your first three months back).
Getting Here Is On Us - If you commute to a Partly office or coworking space, choose from a paid 24/7 parking spot or a commuting 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 just a few steps away.
Office-First with Flexibility - In cities where we have an office (Christchurch, Auckland, London, and Austin), we default to working from the office every day. This lets us move faster, make better decisions, and build strong relationships. We also operate with a high-trust environment, so you can manage your time around your life and flex your schedule to do your best work.
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.
🛬 Relocation
If you're relocating to Partly HQ, whether from overseas or within the country, we offer a generous relocation allowance to help support your move.