Talent Cultivation Lead, Partly
United Kingdom
+ Equity options
Building digital infrastructure for automotive parts supply
Job no longer available
Building digital infrastructure for automotive parts supply
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
+ Equity options
101-200 employees
Company mission
To connect the world's parts, making it easy for repairers to find and buy the right parts.
Role
Who you are
- Exceptional problem-solving and research capability. You can break down complex roles, understand the dynamics of high-performing teams, and build structured talent maps that reveal where exceptional people sit, often before they become visible to the broader market
- People obsessed & high-trust relationship builder. You can build genuine, ongoing relationships with exceptional people through honest conversation, thoughtful outreach and personalised engagement — not transactional recruiting or volume messaging
- Operationally sharp and reliable. You manage cadences, track touchpoints, and run complex cultivation funnels with precision. You follow through, keep systems tight, and create clarity for the rest of the Talent Intelligence team
- Deep curiosity and strong talent judgment. You naturally seek out great people, spot spike signals early, pattern-match across careers and teams, and distinguish genuine top-1% slope from surface-level shine. You enjoy ambiguous early conversations
- Creative and experimental mindset. You’re comfortable testing new channels, trying unorthodox approaches, and “doing things that don’t scale” when the situation demands it. You care about outcomes, not rigid playbooks
- Clear, concise communicator. You can turn fragmented research and weak-signal observations into sharp, actionable summaries for Talent Partners, hiring managers and leadership
- (Bonus) Experience in proactive sourcing or talent intelligence. You’ve built pipelines, run long-term cultivation motions, or uncovered hidden talent for high-growth tech companies. You understand how to find people who aren’t actively looking
- (Bonus) Familiarity with the New Zealand / Australian / US tech ecosystems. You have existing market insight, networks or intuition about where exceptional operators, engineers and rising stars tend to cluster
- (Bonus) Experience with strategic outreach or executive-level talent. You understand how to approach, nurture and engage senior or high-upside candidates in a thoughtful, tailored way
- 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!
What the job involves
- The Talent Cultivation Lead, UK, will own proactive talent discovery, long-term pipeline development, and relationship cultivation for priority roles across Europe
- They will report to Harry Uffindell (Chief People Officer)
- This role will play a critical part in ensuring Partly is the best startup to work for in the world, helping to build an exceptionally talented team as we scale from 100 to ~400 people over the next 24 months
- You will reinvent and build/scale our talent cultivation engine to identify, engage and cultivate the top 0.1%-1.0% of talent across engineering, product, and operations
- You will find undiscovered talent and identify exceptional people long before the market does, keeping them close until the timing is right
- Think of this role as a hybrid of talent discovery, marketing, community building, long-term relationship management, and program management
- Similar to a startup founder, you will be the end-to-end owner, with significant freedom, responsibility, and autonomy to achieve your goals, give Partly an unfair competitive advantage in talent acquisition
- Develop, reinvent and scale our talent cultivation engine
- Design and build the systems that underpin our cultivation efforts
- You’ll experiment aggressively, balance scalable levers with “do things that don’t scale”, and know when to apply analytical rigour vs when to trust sharp judgment
- Obsess over identifying and uncovering extraordinary talent
- Undiscovered talent is where our edge lies
- You’ll be present in the places 1%ers live – online, offline and in-between – testing new channels, seeing what sticks, and surfacing exceptional people long before they hit anyone else’s radar
- Build and maintain future talent pipelines
- Develop deep talent maps for the UK & EU across our highest-leverage roles
- You’ll identify high-signal companies, teams, communities and individuals, documenting where the best people are, how to reach them, and what makes them exceptional
- Design and run long-term cultivation funnels
- Own cultivation motions for 3–12+ month horizons
- You’ll segment prospects, define touchpoint cadences, and ensure we always have warm, high-signal candidates lined up well before roles open – especially for repeat or “hard to hire” roles
- Your work should mean zero “start from scratch” searches
- Nurture and manage relationships with top talent. Build trust with exceptional people across Europe through thoughtful outreach, honest conversations and value-led interactions
- You’ll understand their story, trajectory and constraints, and maintain genuine, ongoing relationships – not transactional recruiting
- Run clear communication rhythms and internal alignment. Build and manage communication rhythms for all cultivation projects, including alignment with Marketing and key internal stakeholders
- You’ll ensure the right people at Partly are meeting and following up with the right candidates at the right times
- Generate talent insight and intelligence. Turn your research into concise, actionable intelligence: emerging leaders, new talent clusters, competitor moves and lessons from closed/won or closed/lost candidates
- You’ll brief Talent Partners, hiring managers and leadership so they can make sharper, faster decisions
- Continuously refine the cultivation playbook. Measure what works, run small experiments, and improve our approach to mapping, outreach and nurture over time
- You’ll help turn UK/EU cultivation into a model we can scale globally
- Support the hiring engine without owning the noise of active process. You won’t run full interview processes or own end-to-end recruiting
- Instead, you operate before the process starts, ensuring Talent Partners inherit warm, pre-qualified, high-signal talent pools
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Partly is a fast-growing tech company quietly tackling one of the biggest challenges in the automotive industry — finding the right auto parts. In a world where nearly everything is digital and automated, the parts industry has been lacking innovation. Partly is changing that by building the AI-powered infrastructure that connects the global auto parts supply chain.
Think of it like this: what Visa does for financial transactions, Partly does for auto parts. It doesn't sell parts but automates the complex, behind-the-scenes processes, ensuring that buying and selling parts is seamless and near error-free. With a massive database of over 50 million vehicle parts, it offers modular tools, allowing businesses to build their own systems without starting from scratch.
In 2024, the company was named New Zealand's fastest-growing startup and has expanded to the US and UK. CEO Levi Fawcett took home top honours at the New Zealand Leadership Awards as well. It's no surprise either, with the company raising the country's largest-ever Series A ($36M) and continuing to scale at pace. With big-name investors, a growing team, and a product solving a real global problem, Partly is very much on its way to becoming a true industry giant.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Meet the team
Levi Fawcett, CEO
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Dec 2022
$21.4m
SERIES A
Oct 2021
$2.2m
SEED
Total funding: $25.3m
Company 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.
- 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.
Company HQ
71 Central Street , London , UK
Articles
Leadership
Levi Fawcett
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously worked as a Guidance, Navigation and Control Engineer at Rocket Lab USA.
Tony Austin
(Co-Founder & CSO)Previously the founder of Metamotiv. Tony also spent 7 years at Amazon, joining as the Head of Automative Europe before becoming the General Manager of Amazon Australia & New Zealand (Retail). He also spent some time as a Country Leader at eBay Motors Group and as a UK Category Manager at AS Watson.
Harry Uffindell
(CPO)Previously a Startup Advisor (Growth, Operations, People, Fundraising) at Growth Engineer. Prior to that, Harry was a Country Manager & Head of Growth at Tilt until it was acquired by Airbnb where he then became the Head of BizOps & Strategy, APAC at Airbnb.
Tim Grunshaw
(Vice President of Engineering)Tim previously spent 7 years at Microsoft in various Engineering roles. Prior to that, he co-founded TradeIntel where he worked as a Software Engineer for 3 years.
Nathan Taylor
(Co-Founder & COO)Nathan previously co-founded AllGoods where he served as the Head of Operations. Prior to that, he was an Editor & Translator at Chengdu TV and a Chinese-English Translator at HS Translation.
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