Engineering Manager (Runtime Platform, Robot Software)

• Wayve is building embodied AI that can drive any vehicle, anywhere. Our AI Driver runs on-vehicle in real time, and the Runtime Platform team owns the application frameworks, middleware (IPC / inter-process communication), monitoring, performance, and observability foundations that make that possible. This is a growing sub-team that we’re breaking out into its own team, and you’ll be the Engineering Manager to lead it
• As Engineering Manager for Runtime Platform, you’ll lead a single team and be accountable for its delivery, engagement, resourcing, roadmap, and performance. People leadership is your first priority: you’ll coach and grow the team, keep it engaged and high-performing, and own hiring as the team stands up
• You’ll pair that with strong technical judgment — setting clear technical direction on latency, profiling, real-time scheduling, and middleware, and owning the outcome of the team’s technical decisions
• Lead and grow the team (first priority): keep the team engaged, developing, and performing with good morale; run 1:1s, set clear expectations, give regular high-quality feedback, manage performance, and support career growth against our career framework
• Hire and build the team: own hiring and onboarding to get the right people in the right roles, and shape the team’s culture and ways of working as it forms
• Drive execution: ensure the team’s work advances company goals; staff committed programs, keep the roadmap aligned to available resources, prioritize, and hold the team accountable for delivery, quality, and operational reliability
• Set technical direction: ensure the team has a clear, holistic technical direction and clear ownership of its technology-roadmap milestones — working closely with the team’s tech lead(s) and stakeholders; own the outcome of the team’s technical decisions
• Own the runtime foundations: guide the team’s work across system design, application frameworks, the middleware/IPC layer, performance & optimization, and measurement & observability. Enable new vehicle platform enablement with incremental work and minimal performance degradation. Implement and maintain strong CI, HIL, and internal quality gates to provide a robust framework for fast iteration.
• Collaborate and unblock: cascade the roadmap, partner with internal Vehicle Software teams, model developers, hardware, and OEM programs. Act as the point of escalation for your team, and proactively surface and resolve risks and dependencies

Benefits

• Private healthcare: Choose our optional health insurance for comprehensive coverage for you and your family.
• Paid time off: Paid vacation plus public holidays and additional leave programs, ensuring you have time to unwind.
• Mental health resources: Through Spill, you can access therapy and mental health support.
• Community and socials: Join clubs or attend team socials to connect over hobbies, sports, or just for fun.
• Competitive compensation: Our compensation package includes cash and equity, making you a true partner in our success.
• Learning and development: Budgets for books, courses, and company-wide training to support your continuous growth.- IPC / middleware: a strong grasp of middleware for high-throughput real-time or robotics systems and the trade-offs across vendors and platforms
• Technical credibility: hands-on depth in what takes to architect and deliver embedded software shipped on a product to real customers. Demonstrate knowledge of high-performance, low-latency embedded software (C++) to earn the trust of senior systems engineers and own the team’s technical decisions. You don’t need to be the team’s top individual contributor
• Performance & systems fundamentals: solid understanding of profiling, benchmarking, latency/throughput/memory-bandwidth analysis, and real-time scheduling, on embedded Linux (ideally also QNX)
• Cross-functional leadership: the ability to set direction and deliver through influence across many stakeholder teams
• Delivery through a team: experience owning a team’s roadmap and shipping through others — planning, prioritization, resourcing, and accountability for quality and operational reliability
• Engineering management experience (essential): a track record of leading, growing, engaging, and retaining a high-performing software/systems team — including hiring, coaching, feedback, and performance management. People management is your first priority
• Familiarity with profiling toolchains (pprof/gperftools, perf, Nsight, NVLumo) and observability stacks (OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Datadog)
• Experience in automotive, robotics, or another safety-relevant real-time domain
• Experience with a micro-kernel and/or real-time OS (e.g. QNX) is a plus
• Experience with NVIDIA (Orin/Thor) and/or Qualcomm compute platforms
• We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. If you’re passionate about self-driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world, we encourage you to apply