Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Emergency Trajectory Models

EngineersOfAI; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the technical direction of a learned emergency trajectory model for low-frequency, high-consequence maneuvers within the AV Core team. You will drive problem definition, modelling, evaluation, integration, and deployment evidence across teams and partners.

Responsibilities include setting strategy, training policy models, and building data strategies for rare events, while ensuring robust verification and safe integration with the

Qualifications

• Track record of staff-level leadership guiding ambiguity in ML programmes.
• Experience developing learned trajectory‑generation or policy models for embodied systems.
• Hands-on with behaviour cloning, reinforcement learning, or related methods.
• Strong Python and PyTorch ML engineering skills with scalable training/evaluation systems.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical strategy and roadmap for the emergency trajectory model with measurable criteria.
• Design and train trajectory-generating policies using suitable ML methods.
• Build a data strategy for rare emergency cases including simulation and augmentation.
• Create rigorous open-loop and closed-loop tests for safety-critical maneuvers.
• Lead integration into the shared driving stack and communicate risks and trade-offs.

Skills

Staff-level leadership

Learned trajectory generation

Behaviour cloning / RL

Python

ML engineering

Tools

PyTorch

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 Staff Machine Learning Engineer in Wayve's AV Core organization, you will lead the technical direction and delivery of a learned emergency trajectory model for low-frequency, high-consequence maneuvers such as evasive steering and emergency braking. You will take the programme from problem definition through modelling, evaluation, integration, and evidence for deployment.

Emergency maneuvers are rare, high-consequence events that place unusual demands on data, modelling, and validation. The hard problem is not simply to train another trajectory head: it is to define the operating envelope of a specialist model, what evidence shows that it improves outcomes without introducing new failure modes, and how it integrates with the general driving model and surrounding system. You will lead that work across AV Core and with partners across simulation, evaluation, safety, and product engineering.

Key responsibilities

• Set the technical strategy and roadmap for the emergency trajectory model, including its behavioral scope, operating envelope, system interfaces, and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Design and train trajectory-generating policies using the methods best supported by evidence, including behaviour cloning, reinforcement learning, or other sequential decision‑making approaches.
• Build a data strategy for rare emergency cases, combining fleet data, targeted mining, simulation, augmentation, and reweighting while controlling coverage gaps and unintended behavior.
• Create rigorous open-loop and closed-loop evaluations for collision avoidance, evasive steering, emergency braking, recovery, robustness, latency, and regressions in nominal driving.
• Lead integration into the shared driving stack, align technical decisions across teams, and raise the bar through architecture reviews, mentoring, and clear communication of risks, trade-offs, and evidence.

About you

In order to set you up for success as a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience.

Essential

• A track record of staff-level technical leadership: setting direction for ambiguous machine learning programmes, aligning multiple teams, and carrying work from research through production deployment.
• Deep expertise developing learned trajectory‑generation or policy models for embodied systems, including architecture design, objective design, training, and empirical validation.
• Hands‑on experience with behaviour cloning, reinforcement learning, or related methods, including objective design, distribution shift, robustness, and closed‑loop failure analysis.
• Strong machine learning engineering skills in Python and PyTorch, with experience building reproducible training and evaluation systems on large, heterogeneous datasets.
• Exceptional technical judgement and communication: able to make safety-relevant trade‑offs explicit, define the evidence needed for decisions, and lead without relying on formal authority.

Desirable