Controls Engineer

Wayve; London (KY); Hybrid; USD 119,000 - 159,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work policy

Office in London

Job summary

Wayve in London is seeking an experienced role to develop and improve vehicle trajectory and motion controllers, translating AI Driver outputs into safe, smooth vehicle motion across ADAS and AV platforms.

You will implement production-quality C++ control software, work with cross-functional teams, and validate through simulation and on-road testing in a hybrid office/work model in London.

Qualifications

• Strong fundamentals in control theory with depth in optimization or dynamical systems.
• Experience developing and validating control or motion systems on real hardware.
• Strong software engineering skills with production-quality C++ code.
• Experience with latency-sensitive or real-time software.
• Ability to reason about complex robotic system behaviour across software and hardware.

Responsibilities

• Develop, tune, and validate control and trajectory-generation algorithms across platforms and driving conditions.
• Maintain and evolve the controls software architecture linking AI Driver outputs to real-time actuation.
• Implement production-quality, latency-sensitive control software in C++ for prototyping to production vehicles.
• Use simulation and on-road testing to characterize controller behaviour and improve performance.
• Collaborate with Wayve teams to define interfaces and enable new vehicle platforms.

Skills

Control theory

Model predictive control

Trajectory optimization

Motion planning

Real-time systems

Robotics debugging

Tools

C++

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.

The Role

In this role you will develop and improve the vehicle trajectory and motion controllers that translate the Wayve AI Driver outputs into safe, smooth and robust vehicle motion across different vehicle platforms and applications (both ADAS and AV). You’ll tackle cutting-edge challenges: developing principled controls approaches, implementing real time systems, testing in complex scenarios and refining our evaluation pipelines. This is a great chance to make an impact on the AV industry and grow alongside a focused team of passionate experts at the forefront of autonomous driving technology.

Key responsibilities:

• Develop, integrate, tune, and validate control, trajectory-generation, and action-processing algorithms across different vehicle platforms, operating modes, and challenging driving conditions, ensuring robust real-world performance

• Maintain and evolve our controls software architecture that connects AI Driver outputs to real-time vehicle actuation and feedback

• Implement and maintain production-quality, latency-sensitive control software in C++ for deployment to prototype, reference and production vehicles

• Use simulation, closed-loop evaluation and on-road testing to characterize controller behaviour, diagnose performance issues and validate improvements

• Work with teams across Wayve to define controller interfaces, integrate with adjacent systems and enable new vehicle platforms and product features

Required Skills/Experience

• Strong fundamentals in control theory, with depth in one or more of optimization, model-predictive control, numerical methods or dynamical systems

• Practical experience developing, tuning and validating control or motion systems on real world physical systems

• Strong software engineering skills, with experience building reliable production-quality systems in C++

• Experience with latency-sensitive or real-time software

• Ability to reason about and debug system-level behaviour in complex robotic systems across software and hardware

Desired Skills/Experience

• Applied experience with model predictive control, trajectory optimization, motion planning etc.

• Direct experience with mobile robotics or autonomous vehicle systems

• Experience in the automotive industry, including ADAS or vehicle controls

• Experience with safety-critical systems, validation, and relevant industry standards (e.g. ISO 26262)

• Applied machine learning experience, or experience developing systems that integrate with ML components

This is a full-time role based in our office in London, England. 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.

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.