Controls Engineer

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 Robotics Team

The Robotics team is responsible for bridging the gap from our model to our vehicle platforms, in order to let the model focus on making driving decisions. We aim to provide high quality data to the model for making such decisions, whilst abstracting away platform-specific aspects. We combine specialisms across the robotics domain, blending strong theoretical foundations with solid engineering practice to span the spectrum from research to production.

Your day-to-day

• Develop, integrate, tune, and validate control, trajectory-generation, and action-processing algorithms across different vehicle platforms, operating modes, and challenging driving conditions, ensuring robust real-world performance
• Maintain and evolve our controls software architecture that connects AI Driver outputs to real-time vehicle actuation and feedback
• Own requirements, release readiness, and in-field performance and issue triage
• Implement and maintain production-quality, latency-sensitive control software in C++ for deployment to prototype, reference and production vehicles
• Use simulation, closed-loop evaluation and on-road testing to characterize controller behaviour, diagnose performance issues and validate improvements
• Work with teams across Wayve to define controller interfaces, integrate with adjacent systems and enable new vehicle platforms and product features (Ownership through the full lifecycle)
• Define and track quality metrics (e.g., comfort, tracking error, and safety margin KPIs, and regressions against them)
• Contribute to safety artefacts: provide evidence for safety cases, work with the safety team to ensure compliance with required standards

What You’ll Be Working On

In this role you will develop and improve the vehicle trajectory and motion controllers that translate the Wayve AI Driver outputs into safe, smooth and robust vehicle motion across different vehicle platforms and applications (both ADAS and AV). You’ll tackle cutting-edge challenges: developing principled controls approaches, implementing real time systems, testing in complex scenarios and refining our evaluation pipelines. This is a great chance to make an impact on the AV industry and grow alongside a focused team of passionate experts at the forefront of autonomous driving technology.

Required Skills/Experience

You should apply if you have:

• Strong fundamentals in control theory, with applied experience in one or more of optimization, model-predictive control, numerical methods or dynamical systems
• Practical experience developing, tuning and validating motion control on complex real world physical systems (e.g., direct experience with mobile robotics and/or autonomous vehicles)
• Experience with test and validation discipline: unit and integration tests, simulation regression suites, closed-loop metrics.
• Strong software engineering skills, with experience building reliable production-quality systems in C++
• Experience with latency-sensitive or real-time software
• Ability to reason about and debug system-level behaviour in complex robotic systems across software and hardware

Desired Skills/Experience

• Applied machine learning experience, or experience developing systems that integrate with ML components
• Vehicle dynamics and actuation. Steering, braking and powertrain interfaces, actuator delay models, and CAN or similar vehicle bus experience
• Experience in the automotive industry, including ADAS or vehicle controls
• Experience with safety-critical systems, validation, and relevant industry standards (e.g. ISO 26262)
• Experience with monitoring and diagnostics: Logging, fault detection, and on-platform debugging tools, ideally with experience investigating field issues
• Experience across multiple platforms or vehicles. The team supports vehicle-to-vehicle variation, such as accounting for parameter identification, calibration, and keeping one software stack across hardware variants

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 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: general background, current situation, interests and Wayve company information & hiring context.
• Competency Interviews: programming and code review.
• Deep-dive technical interviews: domain knowledge & system design.
• Final interview: mission & values alignment.

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

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 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.