Senior Data Scientist

EngineersOfAI; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 267,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Data Scientist to partner with AI engineers, turning experimental and observational analyses of real and simulated driving into actionable insights for the Wayve AI Driver. You will help improve functionality, safety, and performance across autonomous mobility systems.

The role requires designing robust experiments, formulating performance metrics, and communicating findings to influence product direction. Hybrid Sunnyvale, CA based with competitive equity.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience in a Data Science role.
• Fluent in querying and building large datasets, writing production-level SQL for data pipelines.
• Prior experience designing robust real-world experiments (e.g. A/B) and evaluating test-statistics.
• Foundations in statistics: distribution assumptions and frequentist testing.
• Proficient in Python/R data science/ML packages (pandas, sklearn, statsmodels, scipy, dplyr, caret, etc).
• Ability to summarise, visualize and communicate findings clearly.
• Track record of influencing team decisions through findings.
• Bias towards actionable insights that drive prioritisation and strategy.

Responsibilities

• Formulate and iterate performance metrics to guide engineering progress and commercial impact.
• Design experiments and off-road measurements to ensure product requirements are met while safety is maintained.
• Investigate factors in model training/inference to identify bottlenecks and hypotheses for improvements.

Skills

SQL Proficiency

Experiment Design

Statistics Fundamentals

Python/R

Data Visualization

Cross-functional Collaboration

Asynchronous Work

AV2.0 Interest

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 a Data Scientist supporting AI engineers, you will partner with one or more engineering teams, developing actionable insights that guide improvements to the Wayve AI Driver. Using experimental and observational analyses of real and simulated driving, you will help teams advance the functionality, safety, and performance of the Wayve AI Driver, helping to advance Wayve as the leader in end-to-end AI for autonomous mobility.

This means you might:

• Formulate and iterate upon the performance metrics that organize our engineering efforts and guide progress toward commercial success
• Design experiments and targeted off-road measurements to ensure that we deliver product requirements to customers while maintaining safety and performance
• Investigate factors in model training and inference leading to bottlenecks in functionality and performance, identifying and validating hypotheses for unlocking improvements

About you

Essential:

• 3+ years experience working in a Data Science role.
• Fluent in querying and building large datasets, writing production-level SQL for use in data-transformation pipelines.
• Prior experience designing robust real-world experiments (e.g. A/B) and critically evaluating test-statistics
• Foundations in the fundamentals behind statistics: testing appropriate distributions, testing the assumptions behind frequentist stats
• Proficient in using a statistical scripting language and data science/ML packages (e.g. python such as pandas, sklearn, statsmodels, scipy or R such as dplyr, caret, stats)
• Well-versed in summarising, visualising and communicating findings in an accessible and compelling way
• Track record of influencing team direction through your findings
• A bias towards deriving actionable insight that can be used to drive prioritisation and strategy for others.
• Comfortable working asynchronously across time zones with cross-functional partners
• You are deeply curious about building something new and relish the idea of helping to define AV2.0 and how we build it.

Desirable:

• Practical experience with machine learning (e.g. PyTorch). Passion to take research ideas to production.
• Track record of promoting statistical rigour and experimental best practices in your prior roles.
• Prior experience using causal inference/econometric techniques and bayesian methodologies for hypothesis testing.
• Prior experience using large datasets with distributed computing (e.g. spark, hadoop or other map-reduce tech)
• Experience working in a fast-moving tech company or startup.

This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $209,700 to 266,800, 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 tha