Lead Technical Program Manager (Quality & Compliance)

• As the Lead Technical Program Manager for Quality & Compliance at Wayve, you’ll build and lead the technical program management function that rolls out company-wide quality and compliance initiatives - spanning quality (including ASPICE), security, data privacy, and operational safety
• This role reaches across the whole of Wayve: you’ll turn complex, often heavyweight requirements into pragmatic, low-overhead processes that raise the bar without slowing the company down
• You’ll lead flagship initiatives yourself while supporting and coaching a small, high-impact TPM team
• Your impact is measured in how effectively Wayve meets its quality and compliance obligations - and how lightly those obligations sit on the organisation
• A successful TPM leader is a force multiplier - helping teams move faster, more effectively, and with purpose
• Lead the function: Build, coach, and grow a small TPM team; hire to fill gaps and raise the bar
• Roll out company-wide compliance initiatives: Drive programs across quality (including ASPICE), security, data privacy, and operational safety - from framework to embedded practice
• Trusted partner across Wayve: A leader in the org, you partner with engineering, product, safety, security, privacy / legal, and operations leaders to land outcomes and hold the bar - influencing without authority at every level
• Make process simple and low-overhead: Design pragmatic, lightweight processes that meet the bar with minimal friction; negotiate must-haves vs nice-to-haves and find creative ways to meet long-standing requirements
• Establish scalable practices: Governance, KPIs and dashboards, audit readiness, escalations and operational reviews
• Align cross-functionally: Work across every part of Wayve - and external auditors / partners where relevant; manage dependencies, risk, and trade-offs
• Connect to outcomes and represent Quality & Compliance: Tie delivery to compliance status, audit readiness, risk reduction, and organisational efficiency, and represent quality & compliance in company-level reviews

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.- Product-minded: You focus on outcomes and the people your programs serve - prioritising by impact and defining what good looks like, not just tracking activity
• Very good at process: You design simple, low-overhead processes that raise quality and keep the organisation efficient
• Exceptional communicator & influencer: This role crosses all of Wayve; you communicate with unusual clarity and influence without authority at every level, bringing people along
• Raises the bar without the drag: You strengthen quality and compliance while keeping the organisation efficient and fast-moving
• Stays neutral and adapts under pressure: Effective in ambiguous, fast-moving environments; you flex your style and bring structure without slowing delivery
• People leadership: You build, coach, and grow high-performing teams, and raise the bar on the craft
• 8+ years in quality / compliance / process programs: Deep, hands-on experience delivering quality, compliance, or process programs as a technical program manager - ideally spanning standards such as ASPICE, ISO, security, privacy, or safety - including people and process leadership. You’ve built or scaled a program function and you get things done with ownership and a bias for action
• Pragmatic and creative: You negotiate must-haves vs nice-to-haves, and find creative ways to meet requirements that have long been done a certain way - keeping process simple and low-overhead rather than adding bureaucracy
• Data-informed: You steer with the right metrics and evidence, and set direction with clarity
• Strategic & business impact: You link quality and compliance investment to measurable outcomes - audit readiness, risk reduction, and efficiency
• Systems thinking: You reason about how the parts of a complex organisation and its processes fit together, and how a change in one area ripples into others
• Growth mindset: Open to feedback and always looking to improve
• An engineering or computer science degree, or experience working as an engineer
• Background in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or another regulated / safety-critical domain
• Working knowledge of automotive / safety-critical or security / privacy standards - e.g. Automotive SPICE (ASPICE), ISO 26262, SOTIF (ISO 21448), ISO 27001, or GDPR / data privacy