Engineering Manager, OS, Robot Software

Wayve; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 276,000 - 311,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve in Sunnyvale, CA seeks an Engineering Manager for OS to lead a team responsible for delivery, engagement, resourcing, roadmap, and performance.

You will coach and grow the team, own hiring, set technical direction, and drive OS foundations including CI, HIL, OTA, and new hardware bring-ups. This is a full-time hybrid role with salary between $276,100 and $311,400 plus equity.

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading software/systems teams.
• Experience shipping embedded software to customers.
• Strong technical judgment and embedded/Linux knowledge.
• Ability to hire and grow teams across time zones and with external partners.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the team with coaching and performance feedback.
• Own hiring and onboarding to build the right team.
• Drive execution to align roadmaps with resources and ensure delivery.
• Set technical direction and own the team's tech decisions.
• Own OS foundations across design, testing, deployment, and CI/HIL.
• Bring up new hardware platforms with hardware partners and automate testing.
• Collaborate across Vehicle Software, model developers, hardware, and OEM programs.

Skills

Engineering management

Team leadership

Embedded software

C/C++

Linux kernel

Device trees

Build systems

QNX fundamentals

Cross-functional collaboration

Vendor management

Tools

NVIDIA DriveOS

NVIDIA Jetson

QNX

CI/CD

HIL/SIL testing

Job description

About Us

Founded in 2017, Wayve is the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems.

Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.

In our fast‑paced environment big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future.

At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact.

Make Wayve the experience that defines your career!

The role

As Engineering Manager for OS, you'll lead a single team and be accountable for its delivery, engagement, resourcing, roadmap, and performance. People leadership is your first priority: you'll coach and grow the team, keep it engaged and high‑performing, and own hiring as the team stands up. You'll pair that with strong technical judgment — setting clear technical direction and owning the outcome of the team's technical decisions. You will lead the planning for the team - setting the direction for the team and identifying the highest impact work for the business.

What you'll do

• Lead and grow the team (first priority): keep the team engaged, developing, and performing with good morale; run 1:1s, set clear expectations, give regular high‑quality feedback, manage performance, and support career growth against our career framework.
• Hire and build the team: own hiring and onboarding to get the right people in the right roles, and shape the team's culture and ways of working as it forms.
• Drive execution: ensure the team's work advances company goals; staff committed programs, keep the roadmap aligned to available resources, prioritize, and hold the team accountable for delivery, quality, and operational reliability.
• Set technical direction: ensure the team has a clear, holistic technical direction and clear ownership of its technology‑roadmap milestones — working closely with the team's tech lead(s) and stakeholders; own the outcome of the team's technical decisions.
• Own the OS foundations: guide the team's work across system design, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Evaluate and drive the roadmap of the operating system at Wayve. Unlock new hardware platform enablement with incremental work and minimal performance degradation. Implement and maintain strong CI, HIL, and internal quality gates to provide a robust framework for fast iteration.
• Bring up new hardware platforms: collaborate with our Hardware partners on new board bring‑ups and scale with quality. Optimize build, package, and deployment systems for broad capability and high heterogeneity. Set quality metrics and targets to gate deployment from 1 to 10,000 units and follow through with fully automated testing and release gates.
• Collaborate and unblock: cascade the roadmap, partner with internal Vehicle Software teams, model developers, hardware, and OEM programs. Act as the point of escalation for your team, and proactively surface and resolve risks and dependencies.

What you'll bring

• Engineering management experience (essential): a track record of leading, growing, engaging, and retaining a high‑performing software/systems team — including hiring, coaching, feedback, and performance management. People management is your first priority.
• Delivery through a team: experience owning a team's roadmap and shipping through others — planning, prioritization, resourcing, and accountability for quality and operational reliability.
• Technical credibility: hands‑on depth in what takes to architect and deliver embedded software shipped on a product to real customers. Demonstrate knowledge of high‑performance, low‑latency embedded software (C & C++ preferred) to earn the trust of senior engineers and own the team's technical decisions. You don't need to be the team's top individual contributor.
• OS fundamentals: solid understanding of the linux kernel, device trees, board support packages, build & packaging systems for embedded devices, software update and OTA, QNX fundamentals, security and robust testing in SIL and HIL.
• Peripheral drivers: broad experience authoring highly performant and reliable periperhal drivers with experience across both low & high (e.g. PCIe) speed devices. Bonus points for experience with software/hardware architectures that implement high reliability fault tolerance.
• Leadership:
  • Cross functional: the ability to set direction and deliver through influence across many stakeholder teams.
  • Diversity: experience managing direct reports in different time zones and leading projects involving external partners and vendors.

Nice to have

• Experience with NVIDIA DriveOS
• Experience with a micro‑kernel and/or real‑time OS (e.g. QNX) is a plus.
• Experience with NVIDIA Jetson and/or Drive platforms, Qualcomm, AMD, or Renesas compute platforms.

Why this team

The OS team supports Wayve's on‑vehicle stack — other on‑board components rely on the foundations, frameworks, observability, and layers it owns. You'll lead a team whose work contributes to how Wayve scales its AI Driver to new vehicles, OEM programs, and other embodiments.

This role is a full‑time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $276,100 to $311,400, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.

Wayve is committed to creating an inclusive interview experience. If you require any accommodations or adjustments to participate fully in our interview process, please let us know.

We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. If you’re passionate about self‑driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world.

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.

For US candidates only, please visit E-Verify Notice and Participation and Right to Work.

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.