Talent Acquisition Partner [12 month FTC]

Wayve; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Enhanced maternity/paternity leave

Retirement or pension where applicable

Therapists / wellbeing support

Team socials

Job summary

Wayve in London is seeking a senior Talent Acquisition Partner to own end-to-end recruitment for a portfolio of 10–15 roles across software, ML, data engineering and product.

You will proactively headhunt, partner with hiring managers, and use Ashby data to optimise sourcing strategies while contributing to the growth of Wayve’s autonomous driving teams globally.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruitment experience in a fast-scaling tech startup or scale-up.
• Proactive headhunting and engagement of passive candidates.
• Strong data-driven approach to diagnose bottlenecks and optimize searches.
• Ability to partner with hiring managers to shape roles and briefs.
• Experience using Ashby to manage recruitment pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end recruitment for a portfolio of 10–15 concurrent roles across software, ML, data engineering, product and program management.
• Educate hiring managers on job profiles and search strategy to start searches from sharp briefs.
• Use data to focus search effort and continuously improve hiring strategy.
• Advise on AI-enabled hiring trends and translate into candidate profiles.
• Build high-performing, diverse technical and product teams to fuel Wayve’s growth.

Skills

Full-cycle technical recruitment

Sourcing & headhunting

Data-driven decisions

Business partnering

Ashby experience

Tools

Ashby

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 Talent Acquisition Teams

Wayve’s Talent Acquisition team plays a critical role in our success. We hire the people who build and ship our autonomous driving technology. We’re a diverse team, based across the UK, US and Japan, and we take a sourcing first, quality focused and data-driven approach, acting as true partners to the business.

Your day-to-day

• Manage end-to-end recruitment for each role - sourcing, screening, interviewing and closing candidates, using Ashby to track your pipeline.
• Proactively source and headhunt candidates rather than relying on inbound applications, balancing depth of engagement for quality hires with the volume each search demands.
• Run regular check-ins and debriefs with hiring managers to keep every search on track.
• Deliver a world-class candidate experience through transparent communication, timely feedback and a seamless interview process.
• Track day-to-day metrics and flag pipeline bottlenecks as they come up.

What you’ll be working on:

• Owning a portfolio of typically 10-15 concurrent roles spanning software engineering, machine learning, integration and data engineering through to product and program management.
• Educating hiring managers and stakeholders on job profiles and search strategy, so every search starts from a sharp, well-defined brief.
• Using data to make the right calls on where to focus search effort across your portfolio, and continuously improving how we hire based on what that data tells you.
• Advising hiring managers on how AI is changing the shape of technical and product roles, and helping translate that into hiring strategy and candidate profiles.
• Helping build the high-performing, diverse technical and product teams that drive Wayve’s innovation and business impact as the company scales.

You should apply if:

• You have 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruitment experience, in a fast-scaling tech startup or scale-up environment.
• You’re a sourcing-driven recruiter at heart. You proactively headhunt and engage candidates rather than waiting for applications to come to you, and you know how to balance sourcing for quality with adding volume into the funnel when the search calls for it.
• You’re highly data-driven, using pipeline data to diagnose bottlenecks, understand what’s working, and course-correct your search when things aren’t converting.
• You act as a true business partner to hiring managers, helping shape and define roles, not just taking orders.
• You’re forward-thinking about AI and how it’s changing roles and ways of working, and can advise hiring managers on how this shows up in the profiles they’re hiring for.
• You have hands-on experience using Ashby to manage your recruitment pipeline.
• Ideally, you’ve worked across both agency and in-house recruitment, giving you a well-rounded view of sourcing and candidate management.

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 experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.

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 call (45 mins)
• Competency Interviews (Sourcing; 30 mins)
• Deep-dive technical interviews (Cross-function; 1.5 hours)
• Final interview: mission & values alignment (30 mins).

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

What’s in it for you (Location dependant):

• Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
• 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.

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.