Roboticist, Robot Foundation Model

Wayve; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 184,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity package

Hybrid work policy

Job summary

Wayve in Sunnyvale, CA is seeking a Roboticist to join the MEGA team as a founding member. You will work across the robot stack, from hardware to software, to develop general-purpose robotic agents.

You’ll build and deploy robot systems, publish research, and collaborate with researchers, ML engineers, and hardware teams to turn ideas into scalable robotic capabilities. This role is hybrid and offers a competitive equity package.

Qualifications

• Experience in robot manipulation and working with robot hardware.
• Experience with C++ and Python in robotics or ML environments.
• Strong robotics and machine learning fundamentals, with the ability to translate research into robust systems.
• Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICRA, CoRL, or IROS are highly valued.
• PhD preferred; MS acceptable with strong relevant experience.

Responsibilities

• Build, maintain, and operate robot hardware for research and deployment experiments.
• Implement and maintain C++ and Python robot software, including control, planning, and ROS/ROS2-based systems.
• Develop infrastructure for policy deployment, data collection, and the robot learning data flywheel.
• Run experiments on robots and define data collection pilots that accelerate model development.
• Debug and troubleshoot robotic software, hardware, and policy failures in lab environments.
• Build comprehensive deployment and regression tests to improve reliability and repeatability.

Skills

Robot manipulation

C++ and Python in robotics/ML

Robotics and machine learning

Publications in ICRA CoRL IROS

Education

PhD preferred

MS with strong relevant experience

Tools

ROS/ROS2

Git

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!

About The Role

We are looking for a Roboticist to join the Multi-Embodiment Generalist Agent (MEGA) team within Wayve Labs as a founding member.

MEGA is building foundation models for general-purpose robots beyond self-driving vehicles. Our focus is on creating intelligent agents that can perceive, reason, move and manipulate the physical world across diverse embodiments, including mobile manipulators, dual-arm platforms and humanoids.

This is a high-impact role with genuine 0→1 ownership. You will have the opportunity to work across the entire robot stack: you will select, build, integrate, and maintain robot hardware; develop the software needed to deploy and test robot policies; and work closely with research teams to shape data collection, model evaluation, and the learning loop. The goal is work on compelling and publishable research, but also to turn it into systems that demonstrate increasingly general, robust and useful behavior in the physical world.

You will collaborate closely with researchers, ML engineers, roboticists and hardware teams to move ambitious ideas rapidly from research hypotheses to large-scale experiments and impressive real-world capabilities.

This is a rare opportunity to help build a general robotics effort from the ground up—combining frontier foundation-model research with the immediacy and complexity of intelligence embodied in real machines.

What you’ll do

• Build, maintain, and operate robot hardware for research and deployment experiments.
• Implement and maintain C++ and Python robot software, including control, planning, and ROS/ROS2-based systems.
• Develop infrastructure for policy deployment, data collection, and the robot learning data flywheel.
• Run experiments on robots and define data collection pilots that accelerate model development.
• Debug and troubleshoot robotic software, hardware, and policy failures in lab environments.
• Build comprehensive deployment and regression tests to improve reliability and repeatability.

What we’re looking for

• Experience in robot manipulation; working with robot hardware.
• Experience with C++ and Python in robotics or ML environments.
• Strong robotics and machine learning fundamentals, with the ability to translate research into robust systems.
• Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICRA, CoRL, or IROS are highly valued.
• PhD preferred; MS acceptable with strong relevant experience.

What makes this role exciting

• Join a new, well-resourced effort at the intersection of foundation models and robotics.
• Work on generalist robot models and help build the full flywheel around data, architecture, deployment, and evaluation.
• Work with real robots at serious scale.
• Own meaningful 0→1 technical scope in a fast-moving research environment.
• Help define how foundation model research becomes reliable embodied intelligence.

This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $184,200 to 240,000, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. 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.

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.

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.