Controls Engineer

Locations

• Sunnyvale, California, USA
• London, United Kingdom

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

AV Engineering

Compensation

• Estimated Base Salary: $209,700 – $293,750

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About the Position

At Wayve, we are building the embodied intelligence that moves real vehicles safely, and the ecosystem a billion machines will run on in the future. Our Robotics team is responsible for bridging the gap from our model to our vehicle platforms, ensuring the model focuses on making driving decisions while abstracting away platform-specific aspects. We combine specialisms across the robotics domain, blending strong theoretical foundations with solid engineering practice to span the spectrum from research to production.

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Responsibilities

• Develop, integrate, tune, and validate control, trajectory-generation, and action-processing algorithms across different vehicle platforms, operating modes, and challenging driving conditions, ensuring robust real-world performance.
• Maintain and evolve our controls software architecture that connects AI Driver outputs to real-time vehicle actuation and feedback.
• Implement and maintain production-quality, latency-sensitive control software in C++ for deployment to prototype, reference, and production vehicles.
• Use simulation, closed-loop evaluation, and on-road testing to characterize controller behavior, diagnose performance issues, and validate improvements.
• Work with teams across Wayve to define controller interfaces, integrate with adjacent systems, and enable new vehicle platforms and product features.

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Requirements

• Strong fundamentals in control theory, with depth in one or more of optimization, model-predictive control, numerical methods, or dynamical systems.
• Practical experience developing, tuning, and validating control or motion systems on real-world physical systems.
• Strong software engineering skills, with experience building reliable production-quality systems in C++.
• Experience with latency-sensitive or real-time software.
• Ability to reason about and debug system-level behavior in complex robotic systems across software and hardware.

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Nice to Have

• Applied experience with model predictive control, trajectory optimization, motion planning, etc.
• Direct experience with mobile robotics or autonomous vehicle systems.
• Experience in the automotive industry, including ADAS or vehicle controls.
• Experience with safety-critical systems, validation, and relevant industry standards (e.g., ISO 26262).
• Applied machine learning experience, or experience developing systems that integrate with ML components.

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We Offer

• Competitive salary
• 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

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About the Company

🚀 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, generalize, and improve at scale. Our AI Driver learns to drive by understanding the world around it, resulting in technology that navigates complex urban environments with intelligence, precision, and natural flow, unlocking meaningful advances in both safety and efficiency. 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.

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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.

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The Interview Process

Our process is clear and respectful of your time:

• Initial call / recruiter screen: General background, current situation, interests, and Wayve company information & hiring context.
• Competency Interviews: Programming and code review.
• Deep-dive technical interviews: Domain knowledge & system design.
• Final interview: Mission & values alignment.

We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.

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A Quick Note

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.

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Compensation Range: $209,700 - $293,750