Staff Tech Lead Manager, Machine Learning

wayve; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 54,000 - 66,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve, founded in 2017, is a leading Embodied AI company developing perception-enabled autonomous driving solutions. The Staff Tech Lead Manager role is based in London with a hybrid policy, overseeing a team of senior MLEs and guiding the Wayve Foundation Models for offline testing.

The candidate will drive architecture choices, coordinate with UK/US teams, and shape the technical roadmap for scalable, production-grade autonomous systems.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in ML engineering with computer vision and production ML systems.
• 2+ years line-management or tech-leading senior engineers.
• Staff-level depth in transformers, multimodal architectures, and large-scale training.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks, esp. PyTorch.
• Strong cross-functional leadership across teams and geographies.
• Knowledge of perception systems and 3D scene understanding for autonomy.
• Experience with offline models and simulation/counterfactual evaluation.
• Experience leading distributed UK/US teams.
• MS or PhD in CS/Engineering or related field.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the team by directly managing four Senior MLEs in London and hiring across MLE/SWE/data science.
• Own the technical direction for adapting shared on-vehicle models and Wayve Foundation Models for offline use.
• Own the roadmap by driving sprint, quarterly, and annual planning and translate goals into technical programs.
• Drive production quality with rigorous ML engineering practices and scalable interfaces.
• Accelerate the development loop by shortening the feedback cycle for driving models.
• Partner with UK and US teams to align roadmaps and anticipate capability gaps.

Skills

ML engineering

Computer vision

Leadership

Python

PyTorch

Cross-functional

3D perception

Offline models

Simulation

Distributed teams

MS/PhD

Education

MS/PhD in CS/Engineering

Tools

PyTorch

Python

Job description

Salary: £60,000 - 60,000 per year

Requirements:

• 8+ years in ML engineering, including hands‑on computer vision with camera and/or lidar sensor data, and a track record of shipping production ML systems from research through to reliable, monitored, customer-facing software.
• 2+ years line‑managing or tech‑leading senior engineers, including hiring, developing, and retaining strong ICs, with the appetite to keep doing both halves of the TLM role.
• Staff‑level technical depth that earns the trust of senior MLEs: transformer‑based and multimodal architectures, foundation models, and large‑scale training, with the ability to review designs and code credibly.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks, especially PyTorch, with strong judgement about what production‑grade looks like for ML systems.
• Strong cross‑functional leadership: aligning roadmaps across teams and geographies, and communicating technical context and strategic direction clearly to engineers and senior leadership.
• Knowledge of perception systems and 3D scene understanding for autonomy, such as cuboid detection, lane estimation, depth estimation, and large‑scale semantic enrichment of driving scenes.
• Experience with off‑board or offline models: auto‑labelling, model distillation, temporal or world models, or other ways of exploiting compute that on‑vehicle systems cannot.
• Familiarity with simulation or counterfactual evaluation methods for autonomous systems.
• Experience leading or partnering with distributed teams across UK and US time zones.
• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow the team by directly managing four Senior MLEs in London, hiring complementary talent across MLE, SWE, and data science profiles as scope grows, and developing strong senior ICs while holding a high bar.
• Own the technical direction by guiding the architecture for adapting shared on‑vehicle models and Wayve Foundation Models for offline measurement use, using higher compute budgets, larger model capacity, and access to past and future temporal context.
• Own the roadmap by driving planning at sprint, quarterly, and annual cadences, translating ambiguous business goals into concrete technical programmes, and balancing long‑term direction with day‑to‑day execution.
• Drive production quality by building rigorous engineering practice for ML systems relied on for customer‑facing deliverables, championing rig‑agnostic and generalisable architectures with clean interfaces, and maintaining architectural quality in a fast‑moving environment.
• Accelerate the development loop by ensuring the teams models reduce the time between a driving‑model iteration and reliable, actionable feedback, making the AV development loop faster.
• Partner and anticipate by aligning roadmaps with on‑vehicle modelling and Evaluation teams across the UK and US, resolving technical conflicts at the right level, and identifying capability gaps 6-24 months out to build the case for investment.

Technologies:

• 3D
• AI
• Computer Vision
• Hardware
• PyTorch
• Python
• Machine Learning

More:

Founded in 2017, we are the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate complex environments, improving the usability and safety of automated driving systems. Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward, and our intelligent, mapless, hardware‑agnostic AI products are designed for automakers to accelerate the transition from assisted to automated driving. We are a fast‑paced team that embraces uncertainty and complex challenges, values diversity and inclusion, and supports each other to deliver impact. This is a full‑time Staff Tech Lead Manager role based in our London office, with a hybrid working policy that combines time in our offices and workshops with time working from home.

last updated 36 week of 2026