Technical Program Manager Director, Driver Out

Wayve; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 340,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Enhanced maternity/paternity leave

Retirement or pension benefits

Job summary

Wayve is seeking a Director of Technical Program Management for Driver Out in Sunnyvale. You will own the end-to-end programme, coordinating across engineering, safety, hardware and software, and partners such as OEMs to align scope and readiness.

You will build and lead a TPM team, establish governance, manage risk with KPI dashboards, and support executive decisions. A strong background in engineering and 10+ years in complex autonomous programmes is highly valued.

Qualifications

• Ten+ years delivering complex technical programmes.
• Experience building and leading programme-management teams.
• Experience with autonomous-vehicle or safety-critical robotics programmes.

Responsibilities

• Own the Driver Out programme end-to-end from first demonstration to public-road integration.
• Coordinate delivery across driving-model performance, safety, system architecture, verification, hardware and software, and operations.
• Build and grow the TPM organisation and establish governance and delivery practices.

Skills

Technical programme management

Cross-functional leadership

Autonomy/AV safety

Safety cases

Systems engineering

Education

Engineering or computer science degree

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.

Director of Technical Program Management, Driver Out

About our Program Management Team

Wayve’s Program Management team turns complex technical goals into coordinated delivery. Working closely with engineering, research, product, safety and operations teams, we align priorities, manage dependencies and bring clarity to ambiguous challenges. We combine technical depth with cross-functional leadership to help teams move faster, more effectively and with purpose—focusing on meaningful outcomes rather than process for its own sake.

Your day-to-day

• Partner with engineering, science, safety, product and operations leaders, alongside external partners including OEMs and Uber, to align on scope, sequencing and readiness.

• Drive the programme’s critical path, turning complex technical, safety and operational requirements into clear commitments, and managing dependencies, risks and trade-offs across workstreams.

• Coach and support your TPM team, set clear expectations, manage performance and hold workstream leads accountable for delivery.

• Run milestone and launch-readiness reviews, using KPIs and dashboards to assess progress, surface issues and drive timely decisions, escalations and risk-budget management.

• Represent Driver Out to the executive team, communicating progress, risk and readiness clearly and guiding the programme’s most consequential decisions.

What you’ll be working on:

• Owning the Driver Out programme end-to-end, defining and delivering the multi-year plan from the first driver-out demonstration through public-road product integration and initial scaling, connecting concept to operation.

• Coordinating delivery across driving-model performance and safety, system architecture, verification and validation, vehicle hardware and software, remote assistance and operations.

• Bringing together the safety case, behaviour validation, functional safety (ISO 26262), SOTIF (ISO 21448), cybersecurity and the Safety Management System into a credible, signed-off safety argument for driver-out.

• Building and growing the programme’s TPM organisation, developing other leaders and establishing the operating model, governance and delivery practices needed to lead a programme of this scale.

• Connecting Driver Out delivery to Wayve’s commercial path to market, making strategic trade-offs that keep the transition from driver-in to driver-out safe, achievable and aligned with product outcomes.

You should apply if:

• You have 10+ years of experience delivering complex technical programmes, including director-level leadership. You’ve owned large, multi-year, cross-organisation programmes end-to-end and bring deep ownership and a bias for action.

• You’ve built and led programme-management teams, with direct responsibility for coaching, development and performance management. You grow high-performing teams and other leaders, and establish effective processes that raise the standard of delivery.

• You bring extensive experience delivering autonomous-vehicle or comparable safety-critical robotics programmes, ideally progressing towards driver-out or L4 operation. You understand the systems, safety and operational realities involved.

• You’re fluent in safety cases, behaviour validation, functional safety (ISO 26262), SOTIF (ISO 21448) and safety management systems, and can bring these together into a coherent safety argument across multiple workstreams.

• You’re technically strong across autonomy, machine learning, vehicle hardware and software, and systems engineering. You can engage credibly with engineers and scientists without being expected to write production code, and understand how changes in one part of a safety-critical system affect the others.

• You align and influence engineering, science, safety, product, operations and external partners at the most senior levels, building shared ownership without relying on formal authority.

• You stay objective under pressure and adapt your approach in ambiguous, high-stakes environments, bringing structure and clarity without slowing delivery.

• You’re product-minded and commercially aware, connecting programme decisions to the people the service will serve and Wayve’s path to market. You prioritise by impact and define success through outcomes rather than activity.

• You set direction clearly, use the right metrics to steer delivery and communicate complex risks and readiness decisions crisply to executives.

• You’re open to feedback and continuously improve your own leadership, your team’s capabilities and how the programme operates.

• Experience taking an AV programme to eyes-off or driverless operation, or launching a comparable safety-critical service, would be particularly valuable.

• Experience collaborating with OEMs and mobility partners, including ride-hail providers, would also be a plus.

• An engineering or computer science degree, or experience working as an engineer, would be valuable.

Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.

More about Wayve:

Wayve is building the leading AI platform for autonomous driving. We are pioneering an end to end AI approach that enables vehicles to learn directly from real world experience, developing the ability to adapt, generalise and improve at scale. Instead of relying on hand coded rules or pre mapped environments, our AI Driver learns to drive by understanding the world around it. The result is technology that navigates complex urban environments with intelligence, precision and natural flow, unlocking meaningful advances in both safety and efficiency. We believe autonomy represents a once in a generation transformation in how people and goods move, comparable to the shift from horses to cars, and from human driven vehicles to intelligent machines.

Our ambition is to make autonomy universal. Wayve’s mapless and hardware agnostic AI platform integrates with global OEM partners, enabling continuous software evolution and unlocking advanced levels of automation from L2 plus through to L4 as our core AI model scales. In a race increasingly defined by intelligence and real world learning, Wayve is taking a distinct approach, building a generalisable driving intelligence that can be powered by any vehicle, anywhere. By combining embodied AI with scalable deployment, we are creating technology that can be shaped to each OEM brand and driver experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.

How we work - 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.

The Interview Process:

• Initial call / recruiter screen (30 mins)

• Competency Interviews (TPM process, Cross-functional; 1 hour 45 minutes total)

• Deep-dive technical interviews (Program Design, Leadership & Management; 1 hour 45 minutes total)

• Final interview: mission & values alignment (30 minutes).

We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.

What’s in it for you (Location dependant):

• Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
• 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

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.

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

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.