Director of Fleet Operations Execution

Wayve; London (KY); Hybrid; USD 203,000 - 285,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work policy

London office assistance

Job summary

Wayve seeks a Director of Fleet Operations Execution to own the health, performance, and on-road risk posture of Fleet Operations globally. You will lead a team across the UK, US, Germany, and Japan, guiding regional Heads of Fleet Ops and ensuring a single operating standard with regional nuance.

The role emphasizes safety, incident response, and cross-functional collaboration across Safety and Technical Operations.

Qualifications

• Extensive leadership experience managing global, multi-site teams of 100+ people through a layer of leaders.
• Experience operating in technical development cycles (R&D, product development, testing/validation) with engineering partners.
• Strong judgment and decisiveness in safety-critical, high-stakes decisions.
• Track record setting and enforcing performance standards, KPIs, and accountability across leaders.
• Ability to influence cross-functionally with Safety, Technical Operations, and other teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and develop a team of teams across regions and hold regional Heads of Fleet Ops accountable.
• Make authoritative on-road risk decisions and oversee incident response for high-severity events.
• Balance operational requirements with safety and commercial objectives in major decisions.
• Drive global operational consistency through KPIs and performance metrics.
• Partner with Safety, Technical Operations, and other functions to test features and milestones.
• Surface risks and gaps across regions and programs and drive corrective actions.
• Maintain a single global operating standard while accommodating regional nuances.

Skills

Global leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Incident response

Performance management

Stakeholder management

Risk assessment

International travel

Job description

The role

AsDirector of Fleet Operations Execution, you'll own the health, performance, and on-road risk posture of Fleet Operations globally — leading a team of teams across UK, US, Germany, and Japan through the regional Heads of Fleet Ops. This is a leadership role first: you'll be the authoritative voice on on-road decisions, holding the line on safety while balancing operational and commercial demands across a 300+ person global org.

Day to day, you'll set and enforce the standards, KPIs, and performance metrics that keep operations consistent across every region, while demanding excellence from the regional leads who report to you. You'll own incident response execution for high-severity events globally, bringing judgment and authority to complex, nuanced on-road risk decisions. You'll partner with Safety, Technical Operations, and other cross-functional teams to operationalize feature and milestone testing, and you'll be relentless about surfacing risks and gaps before they become problems — all while managing the tension between a single global standard and the real nuance of running multiple internal and external programs and platforms at once.

Key responsibilities:

• Own and develop a team of teams: manage, coach, and hold accountable the regional Heads of Fleet Ops across a 300+ person global organization.

• Serve as the authoritative decision-maker on on-road risk, bringing sound judgment to complex, ambiguous, and high-stakes situations.

• Own incident response execution for high-severity events across all geographies, sitting at the top of the escalation chain.

• Balance operational requirements, safety, and commercial objectives in every major decision.

• Drive consistent operations globally through clear KPIs and performance metrics, holding regional leads to a high bar.

• Partner with Safety, Technical Operations, and other cross-functional teams to operationalize feature and milestone testing.

• Proactively surface risks and gaps across regions and programs, driving structured reviews and course-correction.

• Set and maintain a single global operating standard while managing the nuance and complexity of multiple internal and external programs and platforms.

About you

You'll thrive in this role if you've led large, global organizations through other leaders and have the judgment to own safety-critical decisions at scale.

Essential:

• Extensive leadership experience managing global, multi-site teams of at least 100+ people through a layer of leaders — you've managed managers, not just individual contributors.

• Demonstrated experience operating in and leading through technical development cycles (e.g. R&D, product development, testing/validation), with enough fluency to hold your own with engineering and technical partners.

• Sound judgment and decisiveness in high-stakes, ambiguous, safety-critical situations — you can own a decision and stand behind it.

• Track record setting and enforcing performance standards, KPIs, and accountability across leaders you don't work alongside day to day.

• Strong cross-functional influence — able to partner with Safety, Technical Operations, and other functions without formal authority over them.

• Experience owning incident response and risk management for high-severity events.

• Comfortable managing a mixed workforce of contractors and full-time employees, across regions and time zones.

• Based in or willing to relocate to London, with the expectation of being in-person the large majority of the time, plus regular international travel.

Desirable:

• Experience in autonomous systems, robotics, automotive engineering, or aerospace.

• Background in a regulated or safety-critical industry.

This is a full-time role based in our London office. 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. We operate core working hours so you can determine the schedule that works best for you and your team.