Staff Software Engineer, Ingestion Systems

Wayve; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Relocation support

Hybrid working

Learning & development budget

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Technical Lead for the Data Ingestion Systems team within Wayve Corpus. The role directs the technical roadmap for data pipelines, unifying diverse data sources into AI-ready formats and guiding design, implementation, and reliability across ingestion and processing systems.

You’ll collaborate with robotics, ML engineering, research, and governance teams, mentor engineers, and help hire and onboard new talent while building scalable, observable data infrastructure for

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering focused on scalable data pipelines.
• 3+ years leading or architecting data engineering projects.
• Experience with pipeline orchestration and data governance.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for ingestion and processing pipelines.
• Unify data sources into consistent formats for AI training.
• Mentor engineers and help hire and onboard new team members.
• Improve pipeline reliability, observability, and SLAs.
• Lead design and implementation of pipeline features for ingestion and distribution.

Skills

Software leadership

Data pipeline design

Distributed processing

Mentoring engineers

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Airflow

Flyte

Ray

Observability tools

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.

About Our Engineering Teams

The Data Ingestion Systems team sits within our Wayve Corpus division. Every day, our teams handle and process multiple petabytes of data from our autonomous vehicle fleet and from partner integrations. We turn raw data from many internal and external sources into structured data that powers our machine learning models and research.

Your day-to-day

As Technical Lead, you'll set the technical direction for our ingestion and processing pipelines and lead their design and implementation. You'll unify disparate data sources, including data from external partners, into a consistent format built for AI training and research. You'll work closely with robotics, ML engineering, research and data governance teams, mentor engineers in your team, and help hire and onboard new ones.

What You’ll Be Working On

• Defining and executing a technical roadmap for enhancing and scaling data pipeline capabilities
• Evolving pipeline architecture to support new and changing use cases
• Leading the design and implementation of pipeline features for efficient data ingestion, transformation and distribution
• Normalising and unifying multiple data sources, including external partner data, into a consistent, optimised format for AI training and research
• Building interfaces and systems that reduce bottlenecks and improve reliability and scalability
• Setting best practices for pipeline reliability, including observability, alerting and monitoring
• Leading work to reduce pipeline latency, improve failure recovery and meet SLAs
• Building a culture of transparency, collaboration and shared ownership across teams

Requirements

• You have 8+ years in software engineering focused on developing and operating scalable, complex data pipelines, including 3+ years leading or architecting data engineering projects
• You have technical leadership experience in pipeline engineering or a related domain
• You have expertise in modern data pipeline architectures, including DAG-based orchestration (e.g. Airflow, Flyte, Ray)
• You have a solid understanding of data engineering practices, distributed processing frameworks and pipeline optimisation techniques
• You communicate and collaborate well with interdisciplinary teams
• You have a track record of mentoring and developing engineers
• You have a Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline

Nice to Have

• Experience with robotics or autonomous vehicle sensor data processing pipelines
• Familiarity with third-party dataset ingestion and transformation
• Understanding of compliance and data governance frameworks (e.g. GDPR, TISAX, ASPICE)
• Hands-on experience integrating observability and monitoring solutions

Interview Process

• Initial call / recruiter screen
• HM Meeting
• Deep-dive technical interviews [programming, systems & domain-specific interviews; 3 hours total]
• Final interview: mission & values alignment

Locations & Flexible Working

Our main hubs are in London, Sunnyvale, Yokohama, Herzliya, Vancouver and Leonberg. We operate a hybrid working model that combines in-person collaboration in our dedicated office spaces with focused time working remotely. This gives our teams the connection and energy of working together, alongside the flexibility to do their best work in a way that fits their lives.

What’s in it for you

• Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
• Meaningful equity, sharing in the ownership and long term success of Wayve
• Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable
• Hybrid working, core hours and the chance to work hands on in vehicle workshops and labs
• Learning and development budgets with support for training, conferences and growth
• Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension where applicable, access to therapists, wellbeing partnerships, team socials and more

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.

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.

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.

For more information visit Careers at Wayve. To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve.