Release Manager — AI Models

Wayve; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve, based in London, is hiring a Model Release Manager to own the full lifecycle of AI models from hypothesis to deployment across our vehicle fleet. You’ll balance fast, experimental releases with disciplined release practices to ensure reliability and safety in production.

You’ll collaborate with ML engineers, data scientists, software platform teams, and product stakeholders, defining gates, tracking KPIs, and driving continuous improvement in our model release processes in a hybrid London

Qualifications

• 5+ years in release management, software engineering, or related field.
• Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and release management practices.
• Conceptual understanding of ML fundamentals — training data, inference, model versioning, and probabilistic validation.
• 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 and adapting release processes accordingly.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making in release trade-offs with limited data.
• Good communication with engineers and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Own the model release cycle with a steady cadence for shipping new models.
• Define and run gates from hypothesis to deployment, balancing performance and requirements.
• Drive investigations on regressions and technical debt; manage rollback/forward of versions.
• Identify bottlenecks and implement dashboards and KPIs for visibility.
• Build processes and frameworks that support clarity, stability, and business goals.
• Collaborate with ML platform and integration teams to shape automated release tooling.
• Work with ML engineering, evaluation, data science, software platform, testing, and product teams.
• Act as the central point of contact for status, risks, and timelines.
• Run post-release reviews and drive corrective actions across teams.

Skills

Release management

SDLC knowledge

ML fundamentals

CI/CD pipelines

Release planning

Problem solving

Communication

Education

BSc or equivalent in CS/Engineering

Job description

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.

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 elevate 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.