Engineering Manager, Experiment Platform, Robot Software

Wayve; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Relocation support

Hybrid working

Training budget

Health insurance

Job summary

Wayve in London is seeking a senior engineering leader to head the Robot Software team. You will manage engineers, define roadmaps, and partner with OEM customers to scale the platform across vehicle types.

You will stay technically capable, guide architecture, and drive reliable releases while growing the team in a hybrid London-based setup.

Qualifications

• Experience leading software engineering teams, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
• Ownership of a platform or product deployed to devices or fielded with customers.
• Hands-on experience in embedded Linux systems software (C++ or Python) and code review.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineers, set 12-month roadmaps, quarterly plans and delivery commitments.
• Own hiring, onboarding and team growth as adoption of the platform expands.
• Coordinate with partner teams, PMs, operations and OEM customers.

Skills

Leadership

Platform ownership

Embedded Linux

C++

Python

Vehicle fleet experience

Tools

ROS 2

DDS

YOCTO

Job description

Before the detail, here's the challenge you'd help us solve.

We build the embodied intelligence that moves real vehicles safely, and the ecosystem a billion machines will run on in the future. Very few people in AI can say this. Every role here, whatever the team, plugs into that.

Here’s what this particular role covers.

About our Engineering Teams

Robot Software builds the on-vehicle software platform that Wayve’s AI Driver runs on. Within it, the Experiment Platform team owns the systems that let our researchers develop driving models on the road: deploying models to vehicles, running experiments, and collecting the data that trains the next model.

The team builds a portable development platform that connects to partner vehicles and brings Wayve’s model development capabilities to them, including data collection, experiment control, telemetry and over-the-air updates. It is used across our own fleet and on pre-production vehicles with OEM partners in Europe and Japan, and is central to how Wayve adapts its AI Driver to new vehicles. You will lead a team of engineers based in London, working alongside the Runtime Platform, OS, Sensors and Platform Integration teams in Robot Software.

Your day-to-day

You will lead the team’s people, plans and partnerships. Most of your time goes to your engineers: regular 1:1s, clear expectations, feedback, performance and promotion cycles, and helping technical leads take on more scope. You will work with your tech leads on technical decisions, own the outcomes, and make sure the team responds well when issues come up in the field. You will maintain the team’s mission, charter and twelve-month roadmap, turn them into quarterly and six-week plans, and keep delivery on track.

You will be the team’s main point of contact for partner engineering teams, programme managers, operations and OEM customers, and you will make it clear what the team owns.

You will stay technically capable and aware of the team’s work across the codebase. You will monitor the architecture, guide the team through technical blockers when needed, and engage with technical leaders in other teams at a technical level.

What you’ll be working on:

• Growing the platform: Take the development platform from its first stable release to a product used across many vehicle types, with predictable releases and validation in CI and on HIL benches.
• Experiment control and fleet orchestration: Own model and controller download, the robot state machine, and over-the-air deployment of software, configuration and calibration.
• Self-serve experimentation: Make the platform self-serve, so research teams can run their own experiments on vehicles without waiting for platform changes.
• Scaling data collection: Onboard and event-based logging, data quality, and data offload over
• New vehicles and OEM integrations: Deploy the full platform on Wayve’s next-generation vehicles, and support new OEM integrations through configuration rather than new releases.
• Building the operating model around the platform: Releases, support rota, on-call, metrics and observability.
• Building the team: Own hiring and onboarding, and grow the team as adoption of the platform expands.

You should apply if:

• You have managed software engineering teams, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
• You have owned a platform or product that other teams or customers relied on, and shipped it to devices in the field.
• You are technically capable, with hands-on experience in embedded Linux systems software (C++ or Python), and stay close enough to the code to review your team’s work, guide architecture and help resolve technical blockers.
• You understand connected device fleets, such as vehicles, robots or IoT, including data logging and offload, over-the-air updates and observability.
• You are comfortable leading delivery across many stakeholders, including external partners, and can engage with other technical leaders as a technical peer.
• You care about operational reliability and release quality.
• Experience with autonomous vehicles or robotics, automotive ECUs (for example NVIDIA Jetson or DRIVE, QNX), Yocto, IPC middleware such as ROS 2 or DDS, or containerised workloads on embedded systems is desirable.
• Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.

More about Wayve:

Wayve is building the leading AI platform for autonomous driving. We are pioneering an end to end AI approach that enables vehicles to learn directly from real world experience, developing the ability to adapt, generalise and improve at scale. Instead of relying on hand coded rules or pre mapped environments, our AI Driver learns to drive by understanding the world around it. The result is technology that navigates complex urban environments with intelligence, precision and natural flow, unlocking meaningful advances in both safety and efficiency. We believe autonomy represents a once in a generation transformation in how people and goods move, comparable to the shift from horses to cars, and from human driven vehicles to intelligent machines.

Our ambition is to make autonomy universal. Wayve’s mapless and hardware agnostic AI platform integrates with global OEM partners, enabling continuous software evolution and unlocking advanced levels of automation from L2 plus through to L4 as our core AI model scales. In a race increasingly defined by intelligence and real world learning, Wayve is taking a distinct approach, building a generalisable driving intelligence that can power any vehicle, anywhere. By combining embodied AI with scalable deployment, we are creating technology that can be shaped to each OEM brand and driver experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.

How we work - Locations & Flexible Working:

Our main hubs are in London, Sunnyvale, Yokohama, Herzliya, Vancouver and Leonberg. We operate a hybrid working model that combines in-person collaboration in our dedicated office spaces with focused time working remotely. This gives our teams the connection and energy of working together, alongside the flexibility to do their best work in a way that fits their lives. This role is based in our London office.

The Interview Process:

Our process is clear and respectful of your time:

• Initial call / recruiter screen (30 mins)
• Competency Interviews: leadership and management interview, and hiring manager interview; 2 hours total
• Deep-dive interviews: domain, systems design and code review interviews; 3 hours total
• Final interview: values alignment (30-45 mins)

We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.

What’s in it for you (Location dependant):

• Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
• Meaningful equity, sharing in the ownership and long term success of Wayve
• Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable
• Hybrid working, core hours and the chance to work hands on in vehicle workshops and labs
• Learning and development budgets with support for training, conferences and growth
• Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension where applicable, access to therapists, wellbeing partnerships, team socials and more

A quick, honest note before you apply.

Wayve is not a mature, fully-structured place with the playbook already written. Much of how we work is still being written, and if you join, you’ll help write it. That suits people who want real ownership more than people who need a settled structure from day one.

If that sounds like the kind of problem you want to spend your time on, we’d really like to hear from you.

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.