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
As a Senior ML Performance Engineer, you'll play a key role in high-impact projects, optimising ML inference for edge accelerators and GPUs. The focus of this team is to run large transformer-based models efficiently on low-cost, low-power edge devices to enable Wayve's first driving product.
You'll contribute to turning these models into production systems that run reliably on in-vehicle compute. This is a hands-on role working across ML systems, compilers, runtimes, kernels, and embedded deployment, contributing to several early-stage, high-impact projects at Wayve.
Key responsibilities
- Profile and pinpoint bottlenecks across the full inference stack (model graph, compiler/runtime, kernel execution, memory movement) and deliver measurable improvements.
- Implement and validate optimisations in compilers, runtimes, and/or kernels (e.g. operator fusion, scheduling, quantisation-aware performance, custom kernels).
- Build robust benchmarking and regression testing to ensure performance improvements hold across models, devices, and software releases.
- Optimise for multiple targets (e.g. NVIDIA Orin/Thor, Qualcomm) and work with teams to support these in a maintainable way.
- Collaborate with model developers to influence architecture and training/deployment decisions that affect on-device performance.
- Contribute to team tooling and help raise the standard of performance engineering across the team.
About you
Essential
- Proven experience improving performance in production systems with tight constraints (latency, memory, bandwidth, power/thermal, or cost).
- Strong proficiency with at least one relevant stack/toolchain (e.g. TensorRT, CUDA, Qualcomm QNN, Triton, OpenCL) and confidence learning adjacent frameworks quickly.
- Comfort operating at multiple levels of abstraction — from high-level model behaviour down to low-level kernel/runtime execution.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals (debugging, profiling, testing, and maintainable code).
- Clear communicator and collaborative teammate; able to discuss and navigate performance trade-offs with stakeholders.
Desirable
- Exposure to embedded or edge deployment of ML models, including benchmarking on real devices and handling system-level constraints.
- Experience with NVIDIA and/or Qualcomm SoCs and performance tooling.
- Python and C++ proficiency.
- Some experience supporting or informally mentoring other engineers.
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, and time spent working from home.
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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
- Proven experience improving performance in production systems with tight constraints
- Strong proficiency with at least one relevant stack/toolchain
- Strong software engineering fundamentals
- Clear communicator and collaborative teammate
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!
