Safety System Engineer

Wayve; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Senior Functional Safety Engineer in a hybrid London/Sunnyvale setting to lead safety activities for our ADS and its vehicle integration. You will work with internal and external teams to formulate safety concepts, risk analyses, and robust safety cases.

The role demands ISO 26262 expertise, experience with vehicle testing, and the ability to drive safety decisions in collaboration with engineers and scientists.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of ISO 26262 with hands-on experience in automotive systems.
• Experience conducting vehicle level testing at proving grounds to verify and validate safety concepts.

Responsibilities

• Lead functional safety activities for Wayve's ADS and its integration into vehicle platforms or third-party safety-critical systems.
• Conduct risk assessments (HARAs, FMEAs, FTAs) and build safety concepts to mitigate risks.
• Define system architecture to meet safety concepts and support SW/HW requirements.
• Define test specifications at various integration levels to verify and validate safety concepts.
• Develop the Safety case with structured claims, arguments and evidence.
• Collaborate with process and compliance teams to update safety processes for certification.

Skills

ISO 26262

Vehicle level testing

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.

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!

Your Responsibilities

In collaboration with the other safety expert(s):

• Lead the functional safety activities for Wayve’s ADS, and its integration into present and future vehicle platforms, or the integration of third party safety‑critical systems. This involves:
  • Working with various internal and external teams to gain a deep understanding of the system under development to build the Item Definition work product for each platform.
  • Conduct risk assessments (HARAs, FMEAs, FTAs) to identify the risks and build a safety concept to mitigate the risks to an acceptable level.
  • Work with internal design teams to build a system architecture that meets the safety concept including decisions on decompositions, deriving relevant SW and external requirements.
  • Support internal SW teams in implementing the safety requirements on target HW.
  • Define test specifications at various levels of integration to verify and finally validate the safety concept.
  • Define the Safety case by building a structured claims, arguments and evidence based paradigm.
• Contribute to developing the safety work products for production projects with similar activities as defined above.
• Work with the process and compliance teams to update the safety processes for certification activities.

Your Skills

Mandatory:

• Very good understanding of the functional safety development process as per ISO 26262 with a minimum 5 years of experience in applying the standard on different automotive systems; in particular parts 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9.
• Experience in conducting vehicle level testing activities at proving grounds to verify and validate the safety concept.

Desirable

• Expertise in ISO 26262-6; the candidate must have practical experience in developing or leading the development of ISO 26262 compliant production software and in the qualification of software tools.
• Experience in managing suppliers of safety related hardware or software elements (DIA design, supplier audit and assessment, project management)).
• Knowledge and experience in developing the safety case of an AD systems, in particular:
  • Experience in developing the safety concept for a computer vision based system
  • Sufficient knowledge of neural networks (architectures, algorithms, training and testing pipeline) to understand the challenges associated with the safety assurance of such systems and discuss options and rationales with our scientists
• Experience in SOTIF, especially in identifying SOTIF triggering conditions through analysis and defining testing and validation strategies to assess SOTIF performance.
• Operational safety experience, such as identifying the operational risks and designing training and operational procedures to ensure the safety of testing on public roads, is a plus.

About yourself

• You are truly passionate about Safety and making the world a safer place your mission; this is reflected in the way you choose terms appropriate to your audience, present the essence of system safety and formulate the key takeaway messages.
• You are pragmatic, you understand the need to balance risk versus benefits, even more so in a startup environment.
• You are comfortable in debating with other stakeholders safety‑related trade-offs, at any level of the development process and at any level of the organisation.
• You are self‑starter, autonomous in thoughts but collective in action.
• You are able to think and work at various abstraction levels; thinking “blue sky” and paving the way for long term safety goals, or diving deep into technical details to provide clear guidance and solutions on the safety activities for the development of a subsystem (e.g. controller) or launching an application (robotaxi)
• You are confident in challenging others’ ideas and views, but equally, are open to constructive criticism and able to reconsider your opinions or beliefs.

This is a full‑time, office‑based role located in Sunnyvale or London, depending on the candidate's place of residence. 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 operate core working hours so you can determine the schedule that works best for you and your team.

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.