Software Engineer - Runtime Platform, Robot Software

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Relocation assistance

Hybrid working

Learning budget

Health benefits

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Software Engineer, Runtime Platform, to develop shared runtime software across our onboard vehicle stack. You will investigate performance, guide architectural decisions, and ensure latency, throughput, and reliability meet evolving platform requirements.

The role emphasizes porting to new OSes and compute platforms, building observability, and collaborating with multiple teams to ship robust, scalable runtime services for autonomous driving systems.

Qualifications

• Strong software development experience in C++.
• Proficient with performance profiling tools to identify bottlenecks.
• Methodical approach to designing experiments and evaluating results.
• Foundations in OS scheduling, computer architecture, memory hierarchy, CPU caches, context switching, and thread synchronization.
• Experience with middleware, application frameworks, or shared runtime services.
• Ability to design maintainable interfaces and help teams integrate shared components.
• Collaborate across teams to translate performance data into architectural improvements.
• Deep experience with communication middleware or application-framework design is valuable.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain shared onboard application frameworks and developer interfaces.
• Develop lifecycle management, health monitoring, fault reporting, and runtime diagnostics.
• Evolve communication middleware and support cross-OS and hardware ports.
• Investigate latency and performance bottlenecks across the onboard software stack.
• Instrument software with profiling tools and metrics to identify optimisation opportunities.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to prioritise improvements by impact.

Skills

C++

Performance profiling

Systems software

Middleware design

Tools

Nsight

Lumos

tegrastat

Grafana

Databricks

Datadog

QNX

Momentics

Job description

Описание

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. Wayve’s Robot Software team builds the software that runs across our internal vehicle fleet, enabling autonomous driving and collecting the data used to train new driving models.

We deliver a reliable, stable, and flexible software stack that allows model developers and scientists to run on-road experiments, iterate quickly, and bring new autonomous-driving capabilities to life.

The Runtime Platform team owns the shared foundations that the onboard software stack depends on: application frameworks, communication middleware, application lifecycle management, system health monitoring, performance, and observability.

We build reusable runtime capabilities that help engineering teams develop and operate reliable software across different vehicles, operating systems, and compute platforms.

As a Software Engineer, Runtime Platform, you’ll develop shared runtime software, investigate end-to-end performance, and help guide architectural decisions across Robot Software.

Your work will help the onboard stack meet its latency, throughput, reliability, and resource requirements as it evolves and moves onto new platforms.

Задачи

• Design, build, and maintain shared onboard application frameworks and developer interfaces.
• Develop application lifecycle management, health monitoring, fault reporting, and runtime diagnostics.
• Evolve Wayve’s communication middleware by evaluating technologies, migrating components, and supporting new operating systems and compute platforms.
• Investigate latency and performance bottlenecks across the full onboard software stack.
• Instrument software with profiling tools and metrics to identify optimisation opportunities.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to understand performance pain points and prioritise improvements by impact.
• Work with internal teams and middleware suppliers to resolve integration issues and establish shared APIs, documentation, and best practices.
• Shared runtime services and application frameworks used across Robot Software.
• Communication middleware and high-throughput, low-latency inter-process communication.
• Application lifecycle, system health monitoring, fault reporting, and runtime resource management.
• End-to-end profiling across OS scheduling, memory hierarchy, CPU caches, context switching, thread synchronisation, and critical code paths.
• New profiling and instrumentation tools for benchmarking system performance and establishing baselines.
• Automated benchmarks and CI checks that detect performance regressions and validate runtime behaviour across supported platforms.
• Ports and integrations across new operating systems, vehicle compute, and hardware platforms.
• Observability infrastructure for logs, metrics, traces, and fleet-level performance analysis.

Требования

• You have strong software-development experience in C++.
• You are proficient with performance-profiling tools and techniques for finding and resolving system bottlenecks.
• You have a proven, methodical approach to designing experiments and evaluating results.
• You have a strong foundation in OS scheduling, computer architecture, memory hierarchy, CPU caches, context switching, and thread synchronisation.
• You have developed or maintained middleware, application frameworks, communication infrastructure, lifecycle management, or shared runtime services.
• You can design maintainable interfaces and help multiple engineering teams integrate and adopt shared software components.
• You can collaborate across teams to turn performance data into clear architectural and optimisation decisions.
• Deep experience with communication middleware or application-framework design would be especially valuable.
• Experience porting systems software across operating systems and hardware platforms, building automated performance benchmarks in CI, or using NVIDIA tools such as Nsight, Lumos, and tegrastat is also relevant.
• Familiarity with Grafana, Databricks, Datadog, QNX, or Momentics is a plus.

Условия

• 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.

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.

The Interview Process

• Initial recruiter screen — 25 mins
• Competency Interviews — Programming and technical domain interviews (2 hours)
• Deep-dive technical interviews — Programming, hiring manager, and software design interviews (3 hours)
• Final interview: Mission & values alignment (30 mins)

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

Разнообразие и инклюзия

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.

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.