Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Who you are

• Hands-on experience post-training/fine-tuning large-scale models (language, video, or other foundation models)
• Experience with world models, autoregressive generation, and long-horizon generation
• Experience with diffusion/flow models and understanding of 3D vision
• Strong understanding of model architecture and the ability to contribute meaningfully to architectural/training decisions
• Strong hands-on engineering skills with modern ML stacks (e.g., PyTorch), including debugging and performance/reliability-minded development
• Relevant industry experience (typically 5+ years); advanced degrees are valued, but depth of applied experience is important
• Experience with inference optimisation or deploying large models under latency/compute constraints
• Experience improving data/training pipelines and working across infrastructure constraints (distributed training, efficiency, reliability)
• Proven technical leadership (tech lead ownership, mentoring, setting direction across an area)
• 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

What the job involves

• Gaia is Wayve's world model: trained on large-scale driving video, it predicts future frames from past context functioning as a simulator that generates synthetic scenarios, and operating in closed loop with the driving model itself
• As a Principal ML Engineer/ Applied Scientist, you'll own and drive work on training and improving frontier-scale models trained in-house
• This is a high-impact role with the opportunity to tech-lead a key area and help shape the next version of Gaia in a fast-paced, results-focused environment.Key focus areas are getting Gaia stable and coherent over long autoregressive rollouts, and making it reliably steerable towards the behaviours we need using signal from evaluation, and driving-model training
• Lead and execute Gaia's post-training and closed-loop pipeline, fine-tuning and aligning the world model through post-training experimentation and targeted data curation
• Push Gaia's autoregressive generation towards longer, more stable rollouts, and make the model deployment-ready, inference time and reliability included
• Contribute to broader model architecture and training-strategy decisions where they intersect with pre- and post-training and the application layer
• Partner closely with research, applications, simulation engineering, and cloud/infrastructure teams to translate post-training improvements into measurable downstream impact
• Provide technical leadership through mentorship, review, and setting high engineering/research standards

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.