Head of Operational Safety

The Head of Operational Safety is responsible for leading and developing the global safety framework that underpins all Fleet Operations and incident response at Wayve. This role oversees our Operational Safety Managers across the UK, US, Germany, and Japan — ensuring that all on-road testing is delivered with world-class safety standards, consistent processes, and rapid response capability.

You’ll define and embed scalable safety governance practices, lead incident response and resolution, and ensure that every vehicle, site, and operator is aligned to our zero-incident ambition. This is a high-trust, high-visibility role that combines strategic risk leadership with operational discipline.

To thrive in this role, you’ll bring a clear head under pressure, a high standard of operational rigor, and the ability to lead both calmly and decisively across global teams.

• Proven experience leading safety-critical operations in a fast-moving, high-complexity environment (e.g. transport, logistics, AV or aviation preferred).
• Demonstrated ability to design best practice global incident response protocols, and manage adherence to protocols.
• Experience designing and building organizational structures which promote a world-class safety culture and efficient incident response mechanism.
• Experience investigating incidents, managing escalation and coordinating an appropriate response at a senior level.
• Experience developing and embedding safety policies, risk controls, and audit mechanisms at scale, ideally across more than one jurisdiction.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills — including the ability to lead in tense, high-stakes situations.
• Able to guide others through crisis and ambiguity with clarity and authority.
• Strong working knowledge of safety legislation, incident reporting frameworks, and duty of care practices.
• Comfortable working across cultures and geographies, with a proactive, hands-on leadership style.

• Prior experience in designing and overseeing safety policies and incident response in autonomous vehicles.
• Formal qualifications in occupational safety, risk management, or crisis leadership.
• Familiarity with root cause analysis tools (e.g. 5 Whys, Fishbone/Ishikawa, fault tree analysis).
• Experience in contributing to safety case documentation or regulatory engagement.
• Capability to grow and mentor a multi-regional safety team.

We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. If you’re passionate about self-driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world, we encourage you to apply.

This is a full-time role based in our offices in Sunnyvale, CA or London.  At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home.   We operate core working hours so you can determine the schedule that works best for you and your team. 

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