Software Engineer, Data Ingestion Systems

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 Ingestion Systems Team

Our Ingestion Systems team sits within Wayve’s AI Platform organisation and builds the data foundations behind our self-driving technology. We process vast amounts of real-world driving data so it can be used for annotation, model training and evaluation. Operating at petabyte scale, the team focuses on making these critical data flows reliable, efficient and easy to operate.

Your day-to-day

• Debug and unblock failing ingestion pipelines, stalled jobs and processing queues
• Investigate corrupt, malformed or unexpected data from a variety of sources.
• Optimise Spark jobs and batch-processing pipelines for throughput, reliability and compute efficiency.
• Work alongside permanent engineers to prioritise critical datasets and reduce operational toil.
• Improve monitoring, retries and failure recovery across multi-step ingestion workflows.

What you’ll be working on

• High-volume pipelines that process real-world driving data for annotation, data science, model training and evaluation.
• Resilient systems that isolate problematic data rather than allowing a single bad segment to block a wider workflow.
• Orchestration across complex dependencies, queues, retries and priority data flows.
• Pragmatic improvements to the performance, cost and operability of our Spark-based data platform.
• Ingestion of varied data formats from partners, suppliers and other third-party sources.

You should apply if

• You have strong production experience with Apache Spark and Python.
• You have built, operated or debugged large-scale ingestion, ETL or distributed data-processing pipelines.
• You are comfortable diagnosing production failures involving corrupt data, stalled queues, retries and complex dependencies.
• You understand how to optimise high-throughput systems for reliability, performance and cost.
• You can learn an existing system quickly, work independently and deliver practical improvements in a fast-moving environment.
• Experience with Airflow, Flyte, Databricks, Delta Lake, Scala or Java would be an advantage.

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 power 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

Our process is clear and respectful of your time

• Initial call / recruiter screen (30 mins)
• Competency interview Python Programming (60 mins)
• Deep-dive technical interview: SQL Domain (60 mins)
• Final interview: Mission and values alignment (45 mins)

What’s in it for you (Location dependant)

• 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. If that sounds like the kind of problem you want to spend your time on, we’d really like to hear from you.

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