Senior Software Engineer, Data and Orchestration

Wayve; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

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. Our Data and Orchestration team in London builds the platforms behind Wayve's data engineering, orchestration and

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and production-grade systems experience.
• Solid Python programming skills.
• Experience with distributed systems and large data volumes.
• Knowledge of unit/integration testing and TDD.
• Familiar with Apache Kafka and distributed data stores.

Responsibilities

• Designing and evolving scalable data pipeline and orchestration infrastructure.
• Revamping Harness system and building a DAG-based workflow platform.
• Building tooling for data ingestion, processing, inference and evaluation workflows.
• Ensuring hundreds of parallel pipeline steps run efficiently with correct outputs.
• Supporting batch inference and performance optimization workflows.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

Unit testing

Data pipelines

Software engineering

Tools

Apache Kafka

PostgreSQL

ClickHouse

Ray

Spark

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

The Data and Orchestration team in London builds the platforms behind Wayve's data engineering, orchestration and inference workflows. Our infrastructure lets partner teams ingest, process and transform high-volume data from external vendors, vehicle fleets and customer programmes, and we make sure those systems are reliable, efficient and easy to use.

Your day-to-day

You'll help evolve Wayve's data pipeline platform. That means revamping our existing Harness system and building a new DAG-based orchestration system for our fleet's next-generation data volumes. You'll work on infrastructure used across the company, supporting high-priority data runs, batch inference, evaluations and business-critical incident response, and you'll work closely with partner teams to understand what they need from their pipelines.

What you'll be working on

• Designing, building and evolving scalable data pipeline and orchestration infrastructure for Wayve's next-generation autonomous driving data platform
• Revamping the existing Harness system and developing a new DAG-based workflow platform
• Building tooling and libraries that make data ingestion, processing, inference and evaluation workflows simple, reliable and consistent across teams
• Making sure the platform runs hundreds of parallel pipeline steps efficiently, with correct outputs, no conflicts and effective resource prioritisation
• Supporting batch inference and performance optimisation workflows, so teams can run evaluations in a cost-effective and scalable way
• Improving platform reliability, quality and usability, including incident response workflows aligned to business-defined SLOs

You should apply if

• You have strong software engineering fundamentals and experience designing, building and maintaining production-grade systems
• You have solid Python programming skills
• You have worked with systems at scale, ideally involving distributed systems, large data volumes or high-throughput processing
• You understand software engineering best practices, including unit testing, integration testing, test-driven development and data-driven development
• You are familiar with distributed event streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka
• You understand database principles and consistency models, including eventual consistency, strong consistency and distributed data systems
• You are familiar with traditional databases or data warehouses such as Postgres, ClickHouse or column-oriented databases
• You work well with platform users and partner teams, turning their requirements into scalable technical solutions

Nice to have: Experience in data engineering, data platforms, workflow orchestration or pipeline infrastructure

Experience with machine learning infrastructure, inference systems or ML performance optimisation

Exposure to large-scale batch processing, compute scheduling or resource prioritisation

Experience with tools or frameworks such as Ray, Flyte or Spark

Experience building shared libraries, developer tooling or internal platforms used across multiple teams

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 ex