Tech Lead, ML Engineer - AV Product engineering

Wayve • Sunnyvale, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Founded in 2017, Wayve is a leading developer of Embodied AI technology, creating advanced AI software and foundation models that enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate complex environments, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems. Their vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward with intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving. Wayve fosters a fast-paced environment where big problems ignite the team, embracing uncertainty and leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. They aim high, stay humble, and are committed to constant learning and evolution for a smarter, safer future. Wayve values diversity, embraces new perspectives, and fosters an inclusive work environment where contributions matter and team members back each other to deliver impact. As a Tech Lead, Machine Learning Engineer within Wayve’s AV Product Engineering team, this role involves leading the navigation workstream for the end-to-end autonomous driving system, covering L2+, L3, and robotaxi products. This position offers the opportunity to own work from model training through to deployment in production vehicles, with full visibility into the entire pipeline. Joining a small, high-impact team, the Tech Lead will set the technical direction for navigation ML and have significant scope for growth.

Requirements

• 7+ years of ML engineering experience with a strong track record of shipping deep learning systems to production.
• Proficient in Python and other relevant languages (e.g. C++ and CUDA) and ML frameworks (esp. PyTorch), with a solid foundation in software engineering practices.
• Hands-on experience with transformer-based and multimodal architectures, including vision-language models (VLM), vision-language-action models (VLA), or equivalent.
• Demonstrated ability to train and deploy end-to-end ML models for production systems.
• Strong understanding of end-to-end learning approaches for driving, embodied AI, or related domains.
• Ability to take full ownership of a technical workstream - driving it from research and experimentation through to production deployment.

Nice To Haves

• Prior work in autonomous driving, imitation learning, or trajectory prediction. Or background in the AV industry, ideally from a perception, planning, controls, or evaluation team.
• Experience with closed-loop simulation and open-loop evaluation for autonomous driving or robotics systems.
• Familiarity with navigation problems, route planning, or multi-modal sensor fusion.
• Research publications in relevant areas (machine learning, robotics, computer vision) - less critical than strong applied production experience

Responsibilities

• Lead the navigation workstream, including route planning, rerouting, and driving across L2+, L3, and robotaxi products.
• Train and deploy end-to-end models for navigation and driving features, owning the full lifecycle from model training through to vehicle integration and production deployment.
• Define the roadmap and technical vision for navigation ML within the AV Features team, helping shape the direction of L2+ driving features.
• Collaborate closely with the Evaluation, Robot Software, and Data Platform teams to iterate rapidly and improve model performance.
• Leverage closed-loop and open-loop evaluation frameworks to measure driving quality and validate production readiness.
• Mentor and support junior engineers on the team and shape the long-term technical direction

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed