Director, Application Engineering - US

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.

The role

Wayve is entering an exciting stage of its journey as we take our AI Driver from breakthrough technology into production vehicles at global scale.

As Director of Application Software, US, you will lead the engineering organisation responsible for bringing Wayve’s core AI and autonomous driving technology into customer vehicles. Sitting at the intersection of our AI and autonomy teams, vehicle engineering, and automotive partners, your team will help turn advances in our core technology into safe, reliable, production-ready driving capabilities.

This is a highly collaborative technical leadership role with the opportunity to shape how Wayve approaches application engineering as we grow. You will build and develop our US organisation, establish strong partnerships with our core engineering teams and customers, and create approaches that allow us to deploy our technology efficiently across different vehicles, platforms, and markets.

We are looking for someone who combines an understanding of autonomous driving and machine learning with strong vehicle systems knowledge. You will not need to be the specialist in every part of the technology stack. You will be supported by experienced technical leaders across application software, integration, AI, and infrastructure. What matters is having the technical judgement to connect these areas, ask the right questions, make thoughtful trade-offs, and create an environment where great engineering teams can succeed.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and grow our US Application Software organisation, creating an inclusive, collaborative environment where engineers and technical leaders can do their best work.
• Own how Wayve’s core AI and autonomous driving technology is applied to customer vehicle programmes, from technical definition through integration, validation, release, and production.
• Guide the development and delivery of new ADAS and autonomous driving capabilities across machine learning, autonomy, vehicle systems, and application software.
• Create a strong technical bridge between Wayve’s core engineering teams and our OEM customers, ensuring customer and vehicle requirements are understood and reflected in engineering priorities.
• Provide technical and architectural leadership across autonomous driving, ML-enabled systems, embedded software, vehicle integration, and deployment.
• Partner closely with AI, autonomy, product, safety, validation, release, and systems engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges and deliver high-quality customer outcomes.
• Turn learning from individual customer programmes into reusable components, engineering practices, and integration approaches that can accelerate future deployments.
• Build trusted relationships with senior engineering stakeholders at our automotive partners and represent Wayve in technical discussions, architecture reviews, and programme planning.
• Develop senior engineers and engineering managers, creating clear ownership while empowering technical leaders throughout the organisation.
• Bring insights from customer deployments back into Wayve’s core technology and product teams, helping shape the evolution of our architecture and global deployment strategy.

About you

We’re looking for an engineering leader who is excited by the challenge of bringing AI-powered autonomous driving technology into the real world.

You may have built your career within autonomous driving, ADAS, automotive AI, an OEM, or another environment where complex software and ML-enabled systems meet the physical world. We recognise that great candidates can come from different backgrounds, and we don’t expect one person to have worked on every part of the technology stack.

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, behaviour, 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 programmes, with a 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 judgement and communication skills, with the 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 programmes and creating reusable technical approaches that can scale across customers.

This is a full-time role based in Detroit or Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid). At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home.

The reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $490,000 to $600,000 , plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.

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.