Senior Software Engineer - Runtime Platform, Robot Software

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 Wayve’s Robot Software teams build the onboard runtime that allows autonomy applications to execute reliably across our development fleet. The Runtime Platform area focuses on the foundations shared by vehicle applications: process lifecycle, communication, resource management, diagnostics, performance, and the developer tooling needed to operate complex software on embedded compute. As a Software Engineer, Runtime Platform, you’ll help make Wayve’s onboard software faster, more predictable, and easier to build, debug, and deploy. Your work will sit close to the operating system and application framework and will affect many teams across the autonomy stack.   🧠 Your day-to-day - Design, implement, test, and maintain runtime-platform components in C++. - Profile and debug CPU, memory, latency, scheduling, I/O, and inter-process communication issues. - Build observability and diagnostics for software running on remote vehicle compute. - Work with application teams to understand performance and reliability needs. - Improve developer workflows for building, deploying, testing, and troubleshooting onboard services. - Contribute to design reviews, documentation, testing strategy, and platform roadmaps - .🧩 What you’ll be working on - Application lifecycle and service management on embedded Linux or QNX systems. - High-throughput, low-latency inter-process communication for robotics workloads. - Resource management, scheduling, startup, shutdown, fault handling, and recovery. - Profiling and performance optimisation across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and accelerators. - Runtime metrics, logging, tracing, crash diagnostics, and fleet-level observability. - Reusable platform APIs that support multiple vehicle and compute configurations.   🙌 You should apply if - You have strong modern C++ experience and a solid foundation in systems programming. - You understand Linux processes, threads, memory, scheduling, networking, and IPC. - You can debug complex performance and reliability problems across multiple software layers. - You have experience building production software for embedded, robotics, automotive, infrastructure, or distributed systems. - You care about clean interfaces, automated testing, observability, and developer experience. - You collaborate effectively with application, platform, hardware, and operations teams. Experience with QNX, ROS2 or similar middleware, real-time systems, embedded compute, tracing/profiling tools, or high-throughput robotics data pipelines 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 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 recruiter screen — 25 mins - Competency Interviews — Programming and technical domain interviews (2 hours) - Deep-dive technical interviews — Programming, hiring manager, and software design interviews (3 hours) - Final interview: Mission & values alignment (30 mins) 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. https://wayve.ai/careers/ To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve https://wayve.ai/careers/ 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.