Embedded Automotive Platforms, Staff Software 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 Engineering Teams

The Embedded Automotive Platforms (EAP) group builds the software that connects Wayve’s AI Driver to the vehicle and its onboard systems. We develop the platform adaptation and integration layers that let our AI capabilities run reliably across different vehicles, hardware platforms and programmes.

You’ll join a team working across Wayve’s internal fleets and customer programmes. Our work spans embedded software that resides between vehicle platforms, HMI and AI Driver, and the software interfaces that connect these capabilities to the AI Driver. We work closely with teams across autonomy, hardware, product and vehicle engineering to turn system requirements into robust, testable software.

As a Staff Software engineer, you’ll own significant technical work from design through integration and validation. You’ll help shape how EAP software is structured, make sound engineering decisions in an evolving environment, and work with partner teams to deliver capabilities that operate reliably on real vehicles.

🧠 Your day-to-day

• Design, build and maintain embedded software that integrates Wayve’s AI Driver with vehicle platforms and onboard systems.

• Develop and evolve interfaces between AI capabilities, vehicle software and platform-specific components.

• Work across areas such as inference integration, vehicle data, navigation, localisation, odometry, driver interaction and motion control interfaces.

• Collaborate with engineers across autonomy, hardware, vehicle programmes and product to clarify requirements and resolve integration issues.

• Take features from technical design through implementation, testing, vehicle integration and release.

• Diagnose and resolve issues using simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, vehicle testing, logs and performance data.

• Contribute to architecture and engineering practices that support reuse across vehicle platforms and programmes.

• Use AI development tools where they can improve engineering productivity and software quality.

🧩 What you’ll be working on

• Building and integrating software for current and future vehicle platforms, including internal development fleets and customer programmes.

• Developing reliable interfaces and adaptation software between Wayve’s AI Driver and vehicle-specific systems.

• Improving software quality, observability, performance and resilience in resource-constrained onboard environments.

• Supporting the migration and evolution of capabilities across vehicle generations and hardware configurations.

• Working with simulation and test teams to improve how embedded and vehicle-integrated software is validated.

• Contributing to technical direction, reviewing designs and code, and helping raise engineering standards across the team.

🙌 You should apply if

• Essential: a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical, Automotive Engineering or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• Essential: strong software engineering experience in modern C++, with a track record of delivering production-quality software.

• Essential: experience developing embedded or systems software, ideally on Nvidia and Qualcomm platforms with Linux/QNX.

• Essential: experience with Linux-based platforms.

• Essential: experience with system architecture and designing software components, APIs or interfaces for complex systems.

• Essential: strong understanding of software quality practices, including testing, debugging, code review and maintainability.

• Essential: experience diagnosing problems across component or system boundaries.

• Essential: ability to work with technical partners to clarify requirements and make progress in ambiguous situations.

• Essential: clear communication and collaboration skills, including working across teams and locations.

• Essential: a practical, ownership-minded approach, so you can take a complex problem from investigation through implementation and validation.

• Desirable: experience in autonomous driving, automotive, robotics or another real-time, safety-related domain.

• Desirable: familiarity with vehicle software, middleware, sensors, actuators or vehicle communication protocols.

• Desirable: experience integrating machine-learning inference or other compute-intensive workloads on embedded hardware.

• Desirable: familiarity with AV stack components like navigation, state estimation or driver-interaction systems.

• Desirable: experience with simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing or vehicle testing.

• Desirable: familiarity with automotive software development processes, including ASPICE or similar practices.

• Desirable: experience supporting software across multiple hardware platforms or vehicle programmes.

🌱 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)

• Competency Interviews (Programming and hiring manager interview; 1.5 hours total)

• Deep-dive technical interviews (Systems & domain-specific interviews; 4 hours total)

• 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. 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.