Machine Learning Engineering Manager, App SW

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 intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.

We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; We're looking for an exceptional leader to spearhead our new Application Engineering team, a self-sufficient and high-impact group focused on localising and advancing our autonomous driving technology for the US market. As a founding manager, you’ll lead a small but mighty team of engineers working across robotics, machine learning, and systems integration. You'll drive development of autonomy features tailored for US's road infrastructure, cultural driving behaviours, and regulatory landscape, ensuring our AV stack performs safely and effectively in this highly distinctive environment. We’re looking for someone who thrives in self-directed, startup-like conditions, capable of setting a vision, executing fast, and making robust decisions independently — while staying aligned with global engineering efforts. If you also bring deep expertise in machine learning, that's a major plus. Build and lead a self-sufficient AV development team in the US, hiring and mentoring top talent across Robotics and ML. Drive full-cycle development: from identifying local autonomy needs, to designing, implementing, testing, and deploying features into production. Ensure the team upholds Wayve’s high engineering standards, while operating with agility and independence. Establish close working relationships with our product and vehicle operations teams in the US. To be successful in this role, you'll bring strong technical expertise, proven leadership skills, and a passion for building robust autonomous systems that can adapt to diverse real-world challenges. A strong background in robotics and autonomy, with experience building and deploying systems that operate in real-world environments. Demonstrated ability to lead and grow high-performing engineering teams, ideally in geographically distributed or independent settings. Comfortable with ambiguity: you can define goals, carve out roadmaps, and deliver high-impact work with minimal supervision. Broad technical fluency: capable of reviewing and guiding work across software engineering, ML, controls, and systems integration. Strong product sense and stakeholder management skills: you’re comfortable interfacing directly with OEM customers and representing engineering in external-facing conversations.

Familiarity with US's road environment, driving behaviour, or AV regulatory landscape. A strong foundation in machine learning and its application to real-time decision-making or perception systems. This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA or Detroit (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $336,400 to $381,600, plus a competitive equity package. 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. If you’re passionate about self-driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world, we encourage you to apply.

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. 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.