Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Search & Index

Icehouseventures; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 312,000 - 351,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer for the Search & Indexing team to make Wayve’s massive multimodal video data discoverable and searchable. You’ll help scale the indexing infrastructure powering vector-based and metadata-based retrieval across data curation, training set construction, and ML research.

You’ll shape architecture, own key components, and deliver an MVP system within months, balancing build-vs-buy decisions and leveraging off‑the‑shelf

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or ML systems building production systems.
• Experience with vector databases or ANN technologies such as FAISS, LanceDB, or similar open-source solutions.
• Strong understanding of multimodal embeddings and experience evaluating search quality across relevance, recall, filtering accuracy, and performance.
• Strong coding skills in Python or other systems languages
• Experience building search services, APIs, and large-scale ingestion and indexing pipelines.
• Experience delivering 0→1 systems in ambiguous or exploratory problem spaces.
• Comfortable working across system boundaries (infra, ML, data curation).

Responsibilities

• Build and operate production search and indexing systems at billion-vector scale.
• Apply and evaluate embedding models for semantic and multimodal retrieval, including inference, normalization, versioning, and integration.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure retrieval quality, recall, relevance, filtering accuracy, latency, freshness, scalability, and cost.
• Develop backend services and APIs for vector similarity and metadata-filtered search.
• Own search components from design and implementation through deployment and production operations.
• Collaborate with ML, Data, and Evaluation teams to integrate search into training, curation, and evaluation workflows.
• Support the growth of other engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, knowledge sharing, and mentoring.

Skills

Backend systems

Vector databases

Python

Search services

ML systems

System integration

0→1 projects

Large-scale ML

Tools

FAISS

LanceDB

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

We are hiring a Senior Machine Learning Engineer for our Search & Indexing team, responsible for making Wayve’s massive corpus of multimodal video data discoverable and searchable. This team builds the indexing infrastructure that powers vector-based and metadata-based retrieval - enabling high-leverage workflows across data curation, training set construction and ML research.

You’ll work closely with the Technical Lead and peers to scale, and evolve the system that supports retrieval across hundreds of thousands of hours of driving data. You’ll contribute to architectural decisions, own complex components, and help define best practices as the team grows.

You’ll play a key role in launching the next version of our indexing stack, supporting basic similarity search and metadata filtering across hundreds of thousands of hours of video and sensor data. The immediate focus is to move quickly: leverage off-the-shelf tools, help inform build vs. buy decisions, and deliver an MVP system in months - not quarters.

This role requires someone who is comfortable in ambiguity, technically pragmatic, and able to make strong architectural decisions in imperfect conditions. You’ll collaborate with ML teams, platform engineers, and downstream users to turn indexing from a bottleneck into a core capability.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and operate production search and indexing systems at billion-vector scale.
• Apply and evaluate embedding models for semantic and multimodal retrieval, including inference, normalization, versioning, and integration.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure retrieval quality, recall, relevance, filtering accuracy, latency, freshness, scalability, and cost.
• Develop backend services and APIs for vector similarity and metadata-filtered search.
• Own search components from design and implementation through deployment and production operations.
• Collaborate with ML, Data, and Evaluation teams to integrate search into training, curation, and evaluation workflows.
• Support the growth of other engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, knowledge sharing, and mentoring.

About you

In order to set you up for success at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience:

Essential

• 7+ years of experience in backend, infrastructure, or ML systems, building production systems.
• Experience with vector databases or ANN technologies such as FAISS, LanceDB, or similar open-source solutions.
• Strong understanding of multimodal embeddings and experience evaluating search quality across relevance, recall, filtering accuracy, and performance.
• Strong coding skills in Python or other systems languages
• Experience building search services, APIs, and large-scale ingestion and indexing pipelines.
• Experience delivering 0→1 systems in ambiguous or exploratory problem spaces.
• Comfortable working across system boundaries (infra, ML, data curation)

Desirable

• Experience with large-scale ML pipelines or distributed data infrastructure.
• Familiarity with multimodal data, including video, images, sensor data, and metadata.
• Exposure to active learning, semantic retrieval, or training-data selection workflows.
• Prior experience in autonomy, robotics, or large-scale data infrastructure
• Experience evaluating technical vendors and working with external technology providers.

This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $311,850 to $350,625, 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, we encourage you to apply.

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.