Applied Scientist - Embodied Language

Wayve; Richmond; Hybrid; CAD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI technology company is looking for a Principal Research Scientist to advance language and reasoning in embodied systems. The role involves designing research, collaborating with engineers, and publishing impactful results. Ideal candidates will have a Ph.D. in machine learning and significant experience in large-scale model development and robotics. Excellent compensation and benefits offered.

Benefits

Attractive compensation

Bespoke learning and development opportunities

Flexible working hours

Health insurance

Onsite chef

Unlimited learning and development requests

Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale models and datasets.
• Track record in impactful research with publications.
• Ability to drive new research directions independently.

Responsibilities

• Design research on language and reasoning for AI models.
• Collaborate across modalities with scientists and engineers.
• Publish results to shape the field and attract talent.

Skills

Deep expertise in machine learning

Strong coding skills

Experience mentoring other researchers

Robotics knowledge

Familiarity with modern ML frameworks

Education

Ph.D. in machine learning or related field

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

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.

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

This is a core research role focused on advancing language and reasoning in embodied systems using state-of-the-art foundation models. The candidate will have the opportunity to build on Wayve’s extensive video-learning infrastructure and contribute to a high-impact program aimed at unlocking generalization, planning, and understanding in real-world embodied systems. This work will shape both our scientific direction and future product capabilities, with potential applications beyond driving into manipulation and generalist robotics.

Key responsibilities:

• Design and lead research on language and reasoning for embodied foundation models
• Develop and evaluate video-language architectures for real-world agents
• Collaborate with scientists and engineers working on video perception to integrate insights across modalities
• Publish and communicate results internally and externally to shape the field and attract talent
• Help define long-term research directions and influence the technical roadmap of embodied AI at Wayve

What you’ll bring to Wayve

In order to set you up for success as a Principal Research Scientist at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience.

• Deep expertise (Ph.D.) in machine learning, including language modeling, multimodal learning, or video-language models, with a strong understanding of transformer (and other) architectures
• A track record of impactful research, demonstrated by publications in top-tier venues (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, CoRL, CVPR, ACL, NAACL, RSS)
• Experience working with large-scale models and datasets, ideally in the context of embodied agents or complex sequential data
• Ability to drive and execute novel research directions independently, while collaborating closely with engineering and systems teams
• Strong coding skills and familiarity with modern ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, JAX)
• Prior experience with embodied systems, robotics, simulation environments, or real-world agent deployment
• Familiarity with vision-language pretraining, temporal grounding, or reasoning
• Experience mentoring other researchers or leading collaborative research projects at scale

What we offer you

• Attractive compensation with salary and equity
• Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs
• A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time
• Bespoke learning and development opportunities
• Relocation support with visa sponsorship
• Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time
• Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more!

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.

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.

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.

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