Senior field 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.

About our Field Engineering Team

Our Field Engineering team is an operational backbone for Wayve, providing hands-on technical support for our global fleet operations. The team resolves complex technical issues, supports scaling of cutting-edge autonomous vehicle platforms, and acts as a key link between in-country operations, engineering, and product teams. We are responsible for maintaining the safety, reliability, and operational excellence of our vehicles, ensuring seamless collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.

Your day-to-day

As a Senior Field Engineer, you will act as a hands-on, senior individual contributor working with significant autonomy on complex and ambiguous problems. You will report directly to the in-country Field Engineering Lead, acting as their key operational enabler and escalation point. Day-to-day, you’ll lead resolution of challenging vehicle software and hardware issues, provide cross-regional escalation support, set technical priorities for your team, and own projects, processes, or systems end-to-end. You’ll be the first responder for high-severity geo-specific faults, champion safety-first decision-making, and maintain close collaboration with Field Engineering and Fleet Service leadership.

What you’ll be working on

• Technical leadership and serving as the escalation point for complex vehicle software and hardware issues within your region and across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan.
• Using judgement to decide when to apply established solutions versus when to innovate, seeking guidance from the Field Engineering Lead as needed.
• Setting day-to-day technical priorities and mentoring other Field Engineers during complex investigations.
• Acting as operational stand-in for the Field Engineering Lead when required, ensuring execution continuity.
• Owning projects, processes, or systems from problem definition through delivery and global adoption.
• Identifying and driving solutions for recurring fleet issues, operational bottlenecks, or reliability risks.
• Driving improvements to tooling, workflows, and operational practices with cross-functional teams.
• Acting as liaison between Field Engineering and cross-functional stakeholders during incidents and projects, including leading technical meetings.
• Clearly documenting technical learnings to strengthen global field operations and championing continuous improvement.

You should apply if

Essential:

• Advanced technical expertise diagnosing complex vehicle software and hardware issues in fleet, automotive, robotics, or ADAS environments.
• Familiarity with software debugging concepts: logs, deployments, configurations, system states, and failure modes.
• Proven ability to solve problems independently and make sound technical decisions in ambiguous scenarios.
• Experience leading technical initiatives and setting priorities without formal people management responsibility.
• Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of projects, processes, or systems.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams and global regions.
• Deep understanding of safety protocols, incident management, and operational governance.
• Experience with vehicle diagnostic tools, monitoring platforms (e.g., Datadog, Mender), and ticketing systems such as JIRA.
• Comfortable working in a shift-based, 24/7 global support environment, including weekends and holidays.

Desirable:

• Experience supporting or leading on-road testing operations.
• Strong understanding of ADAS or autonomous vehicle systems.
• Background in collaborating with software engineering teams in fleet or production contexts.
• Experience acting as a senior, deputy, or lead-in-practice within technical teams.

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: Competencies, motivation, communication, practical problem solving; 1 hours total
• Deep-dive Technical Interview: Technical depth for diagnosis/triage, structured debugging, safety mindset; 1 hour total
• Final Interview: Mission & values alignment; 1 hour

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
• 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

Additional Details:

This is a full-time, shift-based role based in our office in Detroit, with 10–15% travel required. Shift patterns will include weekends and holidays, aligned with our on-site Fleet Servicing & Maintenance Technicians.

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.