--- title: 'ML Research Engineer Intern/Graduate, NZ at Partly' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ml-research-engineer-intern-graduate-nz-partly-christchurch-gyv7gvg0jbjy' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-15' --- # ML Research Engineer Intern/Graduate, NZ at Partly - **Company:** Partly - **Location:** Christchurch, New Zealand - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-06-25 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/partly.com/49cc37df-a604-4c7e-910b-e4e9bcf35e46/application **Skills:** Algorithms, Data structures, Machine learning, Coding, Search, Ranking, Retrieval, Graph-based approaches, LLMs, Working with messy real-world data > This internship involves working with the Applied ML team to build and ship machine-learning solutions for the vehicle and parts domain. The role focuses on hands-on experimentation, evaluation, and production rollout of foundational models, with mentorship from experienced engineers. ## Job description 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 connecting the world's parts, and we're doing that by building the AI infrastructure layer for the global repair industry, starting with the $2tn automotive market. Our frontier model, Interpreter, is the world's first AI purpose-built to understand vehicle damage and the parts needed to fix it. Thousands of businesses across the global repair supply chain already rely on it. Founded by ex-Rocket Lab engineers, we've tripled in size in the last 18 months and have recently raised a $50m Series B led by DST Global (Anthropic, Airbnb, Meta, TikTok, Spotify) and including Blackbird Ventures (Canva, CultureAmp etc.), WNDR, Activant Capital, Icehouse Ventures, Square Peg, Airtree, and Ecliptic Venture Capital. We're headquartered in Austin, with offices in New Zealand and London. We're continuing to build a world-class team ensuring Partly is a place where people can do the best work of their lives. We're proud of the culture we've built, and our values are lived throughout every experience. 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 🖍️ This role As an Intern ML Research Engineer, you'll work alongside our Applied ML team to help build and ship machine-learning and algorithmic solutions to real problems in the vehicle and parts domain. You'll be paired with experienced engineers who will mentor you as you take messy, real-world inputs (noisy data, edge cases, shifting constraints) and help turn them into measurable outcomes. This is a hands-on internship for someone early in their journey who wants to learn by doing. You'll contribute to genuine product work, including our efforts to build a foundational model for the vehicle and parts problem space, and you'll be judged by what you help ship: strong baselines, sound evaluation, and improvements that compound over time. Expect to learn fast, ask good questions, and see your work make it into production. 💻 What will you do Contribute to Applied ML solutions. Work on a scoped piece of a real problem area, from framing through to experimentation and, where ready, production rollout, with guidance from your mentor. Help build evaluation that makes progress clear. Assist in creating gold datasets and metrics that reflect real-world performance, so we can tell what's actually working. Learn to blend ML and algorithms pragmatically. Get hands-on with modelling, ranking, classification, retrieval, and heuristic methods, and start developing judgement on when each is the right tool. Build with production in mind. Learn how latency, scale, failure modes, and reliability shape what we ship, not just how a model performs in a notebook. Work across the team. Partner with product and engineering so your work connects to real outcomes, and pick up how a high-velocity team operates. Raise the bar on the basics. Reproducible experiments, clear notes, and thoughtful questions that keep work easy to build on. 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 🥷 Your skills Strong fundamentals. You're studying or have recently studied computer science, machine learning, mathematics, engineering, or a related field, and you have solid grounding in algorithms and data structures. Some practical experience. Through coursework, personal projects, research, or prior internships, you've built things with ML or code and can talk through what you did and why. Curiosity and an evaluation instinct. You like to understand whether something is actually better, not just whether it runs, and you're keen to learn how to measure that properly. Engineering-minded. You write reasonably clean code, are comfortable picking up new tools, and care about getting things to actually work. Clear communicator. You can explain your thinking, ask for help when you need it, and take feedback well in a collaborative, low-bureaucracy environment. Bias for learning. You want to be stretched, you take ownership of your growth, and you're excited to work on hard, real-world problems rather than tidy textbook ones. (Bonus) Exposure to search, ranking, retrieval, graph-based approaches, LLMs, or working with messy real-world data. 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. ## About Partly ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Partly builds AI-powered infrastructure to connect the global auto parts supply chain, making it easier to find, order, and manage vehicle parts. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: Christchurch, New Zealand (with offices in London, UK and San Francisco, US) - **Founded**: 2020 - **Founders**: Levi Fawcett (CEO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Automotive technology / AI infrastructure for vehicle repair and parts supply chain - **Target customers**: B2B — enterprises, multi-site operators, OEMs, and repair shops in the collision and mechanical repair industry - **Mission**: "Connect the world's parts" and build "a future where anyone can fix anything" ## Products & Services - **Interpreter**: An AI-powered platform that automates parts ordering and validation. It creates estimates from images and voice, builds optimal order baskets from multiple channels, validates orders automatically, and finds AP leakage. It removes guesswork and repetitive tasks from the repair workflow. - **Network**: A digital infrastructure layer connecting parts suppliers, distributors, and repairers to streamline communication and transactions across the supply chain. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$76.89M** (latest: $53.29M Series B raised ~June 2026) - **Notable Investors**: Octopus Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, I2BF, Ten13, Shasta Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, plus angel investors including Peter Beck (Rocket Lab), Dylan Field (Figma), Akshay Kothari (Notion), and Randy Reddig (Square) - **Growth Signals**: Headcount has grown 50% year-over-year to ~125 employees. Active job postings surged 200% year-over-year (42 open roles). Expanding aggressively in the US and UK markets. Already described as "NZ’s fastest-growing startup." ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover in AI for auto parts**: Building the first foundational AI model purpose-built for the auto parts industry, giving them a data moat. - **Deep industry + tech crossover**: Team includes veterans from Rocket Lab, Microsoft, F1, Apple, and Intel, combined with auto industry expertise. - **Independent and neutral**: Not owned by any automotive body, allowing them to connect the entire fragmented supply chain without bias. - **Strong investor backing**: High-profile, founder-friendly investors and angel backing from iconic tech founders. ## Strategic Focus - **Scaling the AI model**: Continuing to train and improve the foundational AI model for parts identification, estimation, and validation. - **Geographic expansion**: Deepening presence in the US and UK markets (hiring Sales and GTM leaders in both regions). - **Building the network effect**: Growing the number of suppliers and repairers on the platform to increase data liquidity and value for all participants. - **Product development**: Hiring heavily for product and engineering roles to build out the Interpreter and Network platforms. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & Values**: Office-first, remote-second hybrid model. Values include "Buyer Obsession," "No. 8 Wire Mentality" (kiwi ingenuity), "Think 10X," "Bias for Action," "Earn Trust," and "Reason from First Principles." High transparency with weekly CEO updates and all-hands. - **Work Environment**: Long-form writing culture (meetings start with silent reading of a doc). Direct, immediate feedback culture. High bar for hiring — "every new hire is held to a higher bar than the last." - **Locations**: Hubs in Christchurch (engineering HQ), Auckland, London (global HQ), and San Francisco. Remote work is possible but the company is "office first, remote second." - **Growth Opportunity**: High-growth startup (50% headcount growth YoY) with massive market opportunity. Direct customer exposure for all roles. Internships available. - **Visa Support**: Accredited Employer Visa available for New Zealand roles. - **Engineering Culture**: Strong engineering pedigree (Rocket Lab, F1, Microsoft, Apple). Emphasis on first principles thinking and solving hard technical problems. ## Sources 1. [partly.com](https://www.partly.com/) 2. [partly.com/about](https://www.partly.com/about) 3. [partly.com/careers](https://www.partly.com/careers/careers-at-partly) 4. [linkedin.com/company/partly](https://www.linkedin.com/company/partly) 5. [cbinsights.com/company/partly](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/partly) ## Other roles at Partly - [Operations Associate - Graduate Internship](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-associate-graduate-internship-partly-london-7qggxsvv7rfp) — London, United Kingdom - [Solutions Engineer, Expansion Finland](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-expansion-finland-partly-finland-34hqtfpxsxm8) — Finland - [Solutions Engineer Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-intern-partly-christchurch-fyfyrs03648z) — Christchurch, New Zealand - [Senior Site Reliability Engineer, ANZ](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-site-reliability-engineer-anz-partly-christchurch-m7x1bycxb2e6) — Christchurch, New Zealand - [Account Manager, Repairer](https://feeny.ai/job/account-manager-repairer-partly-auckland-w7k5f78p9w5m) — Auckland, New Zealand - [Director of US Expansion and Business Development](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-us-expansion-and-business-development-partly-austin-6xaz9hjt0cps) — Austin, TX - [Staff/Senior Staff Software Engineer, Austin](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-senior-staff-software-engineer-austin-partly-austin-4z8g30d5j6nd) — Austin, TX - [Sales Representative, Mid-Market, US (San Antonio)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-representative-mid-market-us-san-antonio-partly-san-antonio-n0fqjf1y3c4n) — San Antonio, TX - [Sales Representative, Mid-Market, US (Dallas)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-representative-mid-market-us-dallas-partly-dallas-s1jp4pxse1cw) — Dallas, TX - [Sales Representative, Mid-Market, US (Austin)](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-representative-mid-market-us-austin-partly-austin-xg0crwhmtpdv) — Austin, TX