About the Company

Wayve
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 vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.

In our fast-paced environment, big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future.

At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact.

Make Wayve the experience that defines your career!

About the Role

Job Title: Tech Lead Manager, World Modeling
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Employment Type: Full-time
Department: Science

Key Responsibilities

Technical Contributions & Leadership
As a Technical Leader, you will:

• Architect the future by designing and evolving the next generation of generative world models and driving models, setting a high technical bar for quality and innovation.
• Accelerate research impact by partnering closely with applied researchers to develop and iterate on novel model recipes that drive progress from experimentation to production impact.
• Get hands-on when it matters by leading from the front and contributing directly to key system components, codebases, and experiments, especially during high-leverage moments.
• Disrupt thoughtfully by challenging assumptions, asking sharp questions, and championing bold ideas that push us beyond incremental gains toward breakthrough advances.

Team Management & Cross-Functional Execution
As a People and Execution Leader, you will:

• Make things happen by leading a high-performing, cross-functional team of applied scientists and ML engineers working across ML, simulation, and evaluation.
• Align and connect by collaborating across teams to ensure seamless integration of ML models into our broader stack.
• Architect teams by growing and structuring a resilient team, designing effective operating models, and fostering a sense of belonging.
• Level up by coaching and mentoring team members, tailoring growth plans to individual strengths and aspirations.
• Champion change by navigating your team through evolving research priorities and fast-moving execution environments.

About You

Essential Skills and Experience

• 5+ years of experience in ML engineering or applied research roles.
• 2+ years of people management experience, including direct reports and cross-functional project ownership.
• Deep knowledge of generative modeling (e.g., auto-regressive, diffusion, or VAEs), supervised learning.

Nice to Have

• Experience in AVs, robotics, simulation, or other embodied AI domains.
• Experience working with reward modeling, evaluation benchmarks, or synthetic-to-real transfer.
• Strong publication record or contributions to open-source ML tooling.
• Previous experience in startup-like or high-ambiguity environments.

This Role Might Not Be For You If

• You prefer solving complex technical problems hands-on rather than leading through others via mentoring and team support.
• You mainly manage teams and have no desire to engage in technical projects.
• You are uncomfortable working on high-ambiguity, research-adjacent projects with moving targets.
• You haven't managed a team with direct reports through full-cycle planning, delivery, and feedback loops.

We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. 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.