Staff Research Scientist, Reinforce Learning

Wayve; London (KY); Hybrid; USD 119,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support with visa Sponsorsh

Flexible working hours

Onsite chef

Private health insurance

Therapy and daily yoga

Onsite bar and social budgets

Enhanced parental leave

Job summary

Wayve Labs is seeking Research Scientists to advance embodied AI for autonomous driving. You will explore world models, planners, and multimodal learning, pushing the frontier of scalable, safe AI in real-world robotics. The role blends theory with real deployment across diverse platforms, backed by a world-class research team.

The position is based in London with a hybrid work model, offering equity, relocation support, and bespoke development opportunities to shape the future of autonomy.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience developing and deploying ML systems in real-world or production settings.
• PhD, Master’s degree, or equivalent experience in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, or a related field
• Deep expertise in Embodied AI areas: foundation models, diffusion, RL, Spatial AI
• Track record of publications at top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL)
• Strong programming skills in Python, with experience using PyTorch
• A data-centric mindset, with experience working on large-scale datasets and evaluation
• Strong problem-solving ability and collaboration in interdisciplinary teams

Responsibilities

• Develop World Models and Planners for realistic and consistent simulation.
• Advance RL and reward modeling across real and synthetic data.
• Develop Geometric Foundation Models for 3D spatial understanding in dynamic environments.
• Enable Cross-Embodiment Robotics using multimodal foundation models across platforms.
• Conduct empirical research on scaling laws, generalisation, and sim-to-real transfer.
• Define and evolve evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for long-horizon prediction and driving performance

Skills

ML systems deployment

Python programming

PyTorch

Embodied AI

Publications at top-tier conferences

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

PhD, Master’s degree in ML/CS/Robotics

Tools

PyTorch

Python

Job description

Before the detail, here's the challenge you'd help us solve.

We build the embodied intelligence that moves real vehicles safely, and the ecosystem a billion machines will run on in the future. Very few people in AI can say this. Every role here, whatever the team, plugs into that.

Here’s what this particular role covers.

The Role

We’re looking for Research Scientists to join Wayve Labs and help build the next generation of AI systems for autonomous driving. You’ll work at the intersection of machine learning, simulation, robotics, and real-world deployment, contributing to core innovations that push the boundaries of embodied AI.

Situated within Wayve, we are a high-conviction research team with the strategic patience and backing to prioritise multi-year breakthroughs over incremental gains. We are looking for highly motivated individuals with expertise and passion to push the frontier of embodied AI, including (but not limited to) the following areas:

World & Reward Modeling: Building realistic, diverse simulators that can predict the consequences and costs of actions.

Representation Learning & Spatial Intelligence: Advancing how machines truly understand and navigate dynamic, unstructured 3D environments, from detailed spatial understanding, to efficient long term memory.

Scalable Decision-Making Systems: Designing architectures, reasoning systems, and policy learning algorithms that operate over long contexts, and scale with data and compute.

Cross-Embodiment and Multimodal Learning: Advance embodied learning systems that can flexibly adapt to diverse robotic platforms and multimodal inputs, using vision, language, and active sensors.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop World Models and Planners (e.g., diffusion-based, autoregressive, or hybrid approaches) for realistic and consistent simulation

• Advance Reinforcement Learning and Reward Modeling, building scalable and safe learning frameworks across real and synthetic data

• Develop Geometric Foundation Modelsfor 3D spatial understanding in dynamic, real-world environments.

• Enable Cross-Embodiment Robotics, leveraging the power of multimodal foundation models to accelerate robotic learning on diverse platforms.

• Conduct empirical research on Scaling laws, Generalisation, and Sim-to-real transfer

• Define and evolve Evaluation Frameworks and Benchmarks for long-horizon prediction, scene fidelity, and driving performance

What You’ll Bring

Must-haves:

• 3+ years of experience developing and deploying ML systems in real-world or production settings

• PhD, Master’s degree, or equivalent experience in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, or a related field

• Deep expertise in one or more core Embodied AI areas, such as:

  • Foundation models (e.g., transformers, MoE, large-scale training)

  • Generative world modeling (e.g., diffusion, autoregressive, hybrid approaches)

  • Reinforcement learning (e.g., offline RL, RLHF, reward modeling)

  • Spatial AI (e.g., SLAM/SfM, depth estimation, multi-view geometry with multimodal sensors)

• Track record of publications at top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL)

• Strong programming skills in Python, with experience using frameworks such as PyTorch

• A data-centric mindset, with experience working on large-scale datasets and evaluation

• Strong problem-solving ability and the ability to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience in autonomous driving, robotics, or simulation systems

• Familiarity with large-scale training (e.g., FSDP, DeepSpeed, JAX)

• Experience with sim-to-real transfer or data-efficient learning

• Contributions to open-source ML tools or research infrastructure

What we offer you

• Attractive compensation with salary and equity

• Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs

• A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time

• Bespoke learning and development opportunities

• Relocation support with visa sponsorship

• Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time

• Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more!

This is a full‑time role based in our office in London. 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.

A quick, honest note before you apply.

Wayve is not a mature, fully-structured place with the playbook already written. Much of how we work is still being written, and if you join, you’ll help write it. That suits people who want real ownership more than people who need a settled structure from day one.