Release Manager — AI Models

Posted 2 Days Ago
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London, Greater London, England, GBR
In-Office
Senior level
Artificial Intelligence • Transportation
The Role
Own the full AI model release lifecycle, from training and evaluation through on-road testing and fleet deployment. Define promotion gates, manage regressions and rollbacks, improve release processes, build dashboards and KPIs, influence automated tooling, and coordinate ML engineering, data science, software platform, testing, and product teams. Serve as the central contact for release status, risks, timelines, and continuous improvement.
Summary Generated by Built In
About us   

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!  

The role

At Wayve, you'll help deliver the value of our breakthrough autonomous-driving technology by ensuring that a core part of our it — the AI model — is released reliably, on time, and to the standard required for production.

As our Model Release Manager, you'll own how new AI models move through the full lifecycle — from hypothesis, through training, evaluation, and on-road testing, to deployment across our vehicle fleet — balancing the fast-paced, non-deterministic nature of ML with structure and disciplined release practices.

We're looking for someone pragmatic, methodical, and system-minded — someone who understands how model releases fit into the broader engineering, evaluation, and product ecosystem, and who introduces the processes and systems needed to achieve stability, clarity, and business goals. This role rewards two things together: strong release-engineering instincts, and the judgment to know where a non-deterministic, hypothesis-driven system breaks those instincts and where it doesn't. If you have the first and are hungry to build the second fast, this is worth a conversation.

Key responsibilities:

  • Model release planning & coordination: Own the model release cycle, maintaining a steady and predictable cadence for shipping new models while adapting to business priorities.
  • Gating & promotion: Define and run the gates that promote a model from hypothesis → training → evaluation → validation → deployment. Define and justify the promotion criteria that determine what ships and what is deferred — balancing performance gains, reproducibility, product requirements, safety, and integration compatibility with the onboard software stack and vehicle platform.
  • Issues management: Drive investigations and follow-up actions on regressions, integration issues, and technical debt; manage rollback/roll-forward of model versions.
  • Bottleneck identification & improvement: Identify constraints in the model-release process and drive improvements. Implement dashboards and KPIs for visibility, and proactively escalate gaps.
  • Process & systems building: Understand how model releases fit into the wider system of model development, evaluation, Wayve onboard stack, and product; build processes and frameworks that support clarity, stability, and business goals.
  • Tooling & automation influence: Partner with ML platform and integration teams to shape end-to-end automated release tooling; define requirements that improve developer experience, release efficiency, and stakeholder communication.
  • Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with ML engineering, evaluation and data science, software platform, testing, and product teams to ensure successful and stable model releases.
  • Clarity & communication: Act as the central point of contact for model-release status, risks, and timelines, keeping stakeholders informed at the right level of detail.
  • Continuous improvement: Run post-release reviews and drive corrective actions across teams.
About you

In order to set you up for success as a Model Release Manager at Wayve, we're looking for the following skills and experience.

Essential

  • 5+ years in release management, software engineering, or a related field.
  • Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and release management practices, including testing strategy, system integration, branching, and versioning.
  • Conceptual understanding of ML fundamentals — what training data is, the difference between training and inference, what a model version/checkpoint represents, and why model validation is probabilistic rather than pass/fail.
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools (e.g. GitHub, Buildkite, CLI tools).
  • Skilled at managing releases in complex, fast-moving systems.
  • Comfortable operating with high ambiguity — requirements, architecture, and timelines can shift quickly, and you're able to adapt release processes and tooling as needed.
  • Strong problem-solving and decision-making ability, especially in release trade-offs involving limited or ambiguous data.
  • Good communication skills, comfortable working with engineers and presenting to leadership.

Desirable

  • Experience in AI/ML, autonomous vehicles, or robotics.
  • Familiarity with MLOps methodologies and tooling.
  • Experience with ML evaluation practices and tooling — especially for physical systems: simulation, model leaderboards, statistically powered experiments (e.g. A/B or shadow-mode testing).
  • Awareness of model hardware and software dependencies.
  • BSc or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

This is a full-time role based in our office in 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, with time spent working from home.

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 

For US candidates only, please visit E-Verify Notice and Participation and Right to Work

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

  • 5+ years in release management, software engineering, or a related field
  • Strong understanding of SDLC and release management practices, including testing strategy, system integration, branching, and versioning
  • Conceptual understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including training data, training versus inference, model versions, checkpoints, and probabilistic validation
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools such as GitHub, Buildkite, and CLI tools
  • Experience managing releases in complex, fast-moving systems
  • Ability to operate effectively amid ambiguity and adapt release processes and tooling
  • Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills for release trade-offs involving limited or ambiguous data
  • Strong communication skills and comfort working with engineers and presenting to leadership
  • Experience in AI/ML, autonomous vehicles, or robotics
  • Familiarity with MLOps methodologies and tooling
  • Experience with ML evaluation practices and tooling, including simulation, model leaderboards, A/B testing, or shadow-mode testing
  • Awareness of model hardware and software dependencies
  • BSc or equivalent degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline

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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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

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The Company
HQ: London
200 Employees
Year Founded: 2017

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!

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