Founded in 2017, Wayve is the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems.
Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.
In our fast-paced environment big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future.
At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact.
Make Wayve the experience that defines your career!
We're looking for an exceptional leader to spearhead our new Application Engineering team, a self-sufficient and high-impact group focused on localising and advancing our autonomous driving technology for the US market. This is a unique opportunity to shape Wayve’s AV capabilities in the US from the ground up.
As a founding manager, you’ll lead a small but mighty team of engineers working across robotics, machine learning, and systems integration. You'll drive development of autonomy features tailored for US's road infrastructure, cultural driving behaviours, and regulatory landscape, ensuring our AV stack performs safely and effectively in this highly distinctive environment.
We’re looking for someone who thrives in self-directed, startup-like conditions, capable of setting a vision, executing fast, and making robust decisions independently — while staying aligned with global engineering efforts.
This role requires breadth: strong experience across AV systems, including robotics and autonomy, is essential. If you also bring deep expertise in machine learning, that's a major plus.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and lead a self-sufficient AV development team in the US, hiring and mentoring top talent across Robotics and ML.
- Deliver autonomy capabilities tailored to road conditions and driving norms, in close collaboration with central Autonomy teams.
- Drive full-cycle development: from identifying local autonomy needs, to designing, implementing, testing, and deploying features into production.
- Ensure the team upholds Wayve’s high engineering standards, while operating with agility and independence.
- Work closely with OEM partners in the US — representing Wayve’s autonomy team in technical discussions, capturing product requirements, and shaping joint development plans.
- Establish close working relationships with our product and vehicle operations teams in the US.
To be successful in this role, you'll bring strong technical expertise, proven leadership skills, and a passion for building robust autonomous systems that can adapt to diverse real-world challenges.
Essential- A strong background in robotics and autonomy, with experience building and deploying systems that operate in real-world environments.
- Demonstrated ability to lead and grow high-performing engineering teams, ideally in geographically distributed or independent settings.
- Comfortable with ambiguity: you can define goals, carve out roadmaps, and deliver high-impact work with minimal supervision.
- Broad technical fluency: capable of reviewing and guiding work across software engineering, ML, controls, and systems integration.
- Excellent communication skills: you’re able to clearly convey technical context and strategic vision across cultures and time zones.
- Strong product sense and stakeholder management skills: you’re comfortable interfacing directly with OEM customers and representing engineering in external-facing conversations.
- Prior experience in autonomous vehicles or robotic systems operating at scale.
- Familiarity with US's road environment, driving behaviour, or AV regulatory landscape.
- A strong foundation in machine learning and its application to real-time decision-making or perception systems.
This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA or Detroit (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $336,400 to $381,600, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.
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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Wayve is committed to creating an inclusive interview experience. If you require any accommodations or adjustments to participate fully in our interview process, please let us know.
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.
At Wayve we're committed to creating a diverse, fair and respectful culture that is inclusive of everyone based on their unique skills and perspectives, and regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law.
For more information visit Careers at Wayve.
To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve
DISCLAIMER: We will not ask about marriage or pregnancy, care responsibilities or disabilities in any of our job adverts or interviews. However, we do look to capture information about care responsibilities, and disabilities among other diversity information as part of an optional DEI Monitoring form to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring process and ensure that the process is inclusive and non-discriminatory.
Skills Required
- Strong background in robotics and autonomy
- Experience building and deploying real-world systems
- Ability to lead and grow engineering teams
- Broad technical fluency in software engineering and ML
- Excellent communication skills across cultures
- Strong product sense and stakeholder management skills
Wayve Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Wayve and has not been reviewed or approved by Wayve.
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Healthcare Strength — Private healthcare and access to therapy via Spill are part of the standard package. This indicates robust health support within the core offering.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Paid vacation, public holidays, and additional leave programs are explicitly listed. This breadth of time away supports work–life balance expectations.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Cash plus equity is standard in offers at this growth stage. This provides ownership alongside salary with perceived upside tied to company momentum.
Wayve Insights
What We Do
We're Wayve, a leading developer of embodied intelligence for autonomous vehicles. We use AI to pioneer a next-generation approach to self-driving: AV2.0, which enables fleet operators to unlock the benefits of AV technology at scale. Founded in 2017, Wayve is made up of a diverse team of experts in machine learning and robotics. We were the first to deploy AVs on public roads with end-to-end deep learning. Today, our teams are based in London and California, and we're testing AVs in cities across the UK. Inspired by our vision for a smarter, safer, more sustainable world, we're looking for people who are passionate about building breakthrough solutions to some of the world’s most important challenges. If you're looking for an exciting opportunity with a dynamic team, get in touch!
