Tech Lead - Autonomy Performance, Robotaxi

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 Robotaxi Teams The Robotaxi team is taking Wayve's AI Driver to its first public-scale deployment, with fare-paying riders on global ride-hail platforms. This team owns the end-to-end performance operating system for the product: the metrics, triage, and release gates that decide whether the autonomy is good enough to ship, and stays great release over release. For an end-to-end learned driving system, there's no existing playbook to follow: this team is defining what "performance" means from scratch. 🧠 Your day-to-day - Own and evolve the autonomy performance measurement framework for Robotaxi (driving + pick-up/drop-off): the metrics, dashboards, and narrative leadership uses to make ship/no-ship decisions - Build and run the end-to-end performance improvement loop: detect issues, triage and prioritise, drive root-cause investigations, and land fixes across model, robot software, backend, and evaluation tooling - Lead cross-functional execution across AV core, evaluation/validation, robotics, robot software, triage/systems, and SRE, aligning roadmaps to performance outcomes without direct reporting authority - Define and enforce performance release gates and regression detection for production deployments, owning readiness calls and incident follow-through - Stay hands-on in the data and code when needed (Python/C++/SQL) to accelerate debugging and unblock delivery 🧩 What you'll be working on: - Standing up Robotaxi's performance operating system from scratch: metrics, triage funnel, release gates, and rollback plans for an end-to-end learned driving system with no existing playbook to copy - External-facing performance reporting that's trusted and repeatable enough to share directly with partners like Uber - Integrating new model features and architectures from core engineering into live Robotaxi operations - The stack underneath it all: WayveCode (Python + C++), Looker, Databricks/SQL, Grafana, and internal evaluation and sim tooling - In your first 90 days: mapping the top prioritised fixes across backend, robot, and driving model, and shipping a new driving model deployment and robot software release end-to-end 👤 You should apply if: - You've demonstrated cross-functional engineering leadership, steering complex delivery across multiple teams and stakeholders to production outcomes, without relying on direct line management - You bring a strong product and customer orientation, and can connect technical performance metrics to rider experience, operational outcomes, and launch readiness - You have strong autonomy/robotics performance debugging experience, including deep hands-on work with real-world issues and time-series/real-time signals, rather than just managing a queue - You have strong technical foundations in learned systems/ML-driven robotics, and can reason about model behaviour, failure modes, and measurement pitfalls in data-driven autonomy stacks - You're production-fluent in Python, C++, and SQL, comfortable working directly in code and analytics pipelines to diagnose problems and validate improvements - You have experience owning or co-owning releases to a fleet of robots/vehicles in production, including release processes, gates, rollback plans, and regression handling - You're familiar with modern data/observability stacks used in autonomy programs (e.g. Databricks/SQL, Grafana, internal eval/sim tooling) 🌱 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 (30 mins) - Hiring manager Interview (30 mins) - Deep-dive technical interviews (product sense, domain and system design; 3 hours total) - Final interview: mission & values alignment (45 mins) We'll always explain the format and work around your availability. What's in it for you (Location dependent): 💰 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 partner discounts 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.