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Salary: USD 490,000 - 600,000 / annual
Wayve is building an AI platform for autonomous driving that enables vehicles to learn directly from real-world experience. As Director of Application Engineering, US, you will lead the engineering organization responsible for bringing Wayve's core AI and autonomous driving technology into production vehicles at global scale.
You will sit at the intersection of Wayve's AI and autonomy teams, vehicle engineering, and automotive partners. Your primary responsibilities include:
- Leading and growing the US Application Software organization, fostering an inclusive, collaborative environment where engineers and technical leaders excel.
- Owning how Wayve's core AI and autonomous driving technology is applied to customer vehicle programs, from technical definition through integration, validation, release, and production.
- Guiding development and delivery of new ADAS and autonomous driving capabilities across machine learning, autonomy, vehicle systems, and application software.
- Creating a strong technical bridge between Wayve's core engineering teams and OEM customers, ensuring requirements are understood and reflected in engineering priorities.
- Providing technical and architectural leadership across autonomous driving, ML-enabled systems, embedded software, vehicle integration, and deployment.
- Partnering closely with AI, autonomy, product, safety, validation, release, and systems engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges.
- Turning learning from individual customer programs into reusable components, engineering practices, and integration approaches that accelerate future deployments.
- Building trusted relationships with senior engineering stakeholders at automotive partners and representing Wayve in technical discussions and architecture reviews.
- Developing senior engineers and engineering managers, creating clear ownership while empowering technical leaders.
- Bringing insights from customer deployments back into Wayve's core technology and product teams to shape architecture and global deployment strategy.
This is a highly collaborative technical leadership role with the opportunity to shape how Wayve approaches application engineering as the company scales. You will combine understanding of autonomous driving and machine learning with strong vehicle systems knowledge. You will be supported by experienced technical leaders across application software, integration, AI, and infrastructure.
The role is based in either Detroit or Sunnyvale, CA on a hybrid basis, combining in-office time for innovation and collaboration with remote work flexibility.
REQUIREMENTS:
Essential:
- Significant engineering and leadership experience within autonomous driving, ADAS, automotive AI, or related vehicle technologies.
- Strong understanding of autonomous driving and machine learning, including how ML-enabled driving capabilities are developed, integrated, validated, and deployed in vehicles.
- Experience taking a new driving feature, behavior, or capability from development towards production, with meaningful technical ownership across the autonomy/ML and vehicle integration lifecycle.
- Experience delivering complex software or AI-enabled systems within production automotive programs, with good understanding of vehicle systems, embedded platforms, and integration constraints.
- Experience building and leading multidisciplinary engineering teams, including developing senior engineers, technical leaders, and/or engineering managers.
- Strong technical judgment and communication skills, with ability to work effectively across engineering disciplines and build trusted relationships with OEM customers and technical partners.
Desirable:
- Experience developing or deploying end-to-end learned driving systems, including model training, adaptation, tuning, or deployment.
- Familiarity with automotive embedded environments such as C++, Linux, QNX, or Adaptive AUTOSAR.
- Familiarity with automotive development, safety, and security frameworks such as ISO 26262, ISO/SAE 21434, UN R155/156, or A-SPICE.
- Experience working across multiple vehicle platforms or OEM programs and creating reusable technical approaches that scale across customers.
