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.
Here’s what this particular role covers.
🛠️ About our Engineering Teams
The Japan Fleet Reliability SRE team, part of Vehicle Software, keeps Wayve’s autonomous vehicles safe, available and ready for daily operation in Japan. The team works closely with the separate Field Engineering organisation, Fleet Operations, App SW and the wider Engineering org, and connects Japan’s real-world needs with global Vehicle Software engineering.
🧠 Your day-to-day
As a hands-on Engineering Manager, you’ll lead the Japan Fleet Reliability SRE team, which is responsible for the reliability, safety and availability of our autonomous vehicle fleet. You’ll own your team’s people, roadmap and reliability outcomes, and stay close to incidents, designs, code and vehicle systems, contributing directly when the problem demands it. This is not a coordination-only role. Your impact will be measured by the outcomes of your team and systems, not by a fixed percentage of time spent coding.
🧩 What you’ll be working on:
Building, coaching and retaining a high-performing, inclusive Japan Fleet Reliability SRE team, owning hiring, performance, career development, capacity and sustainable escalation coverage.
Improving safe on-road availability, detection and recovery, repeat-incident rates, software and model rollout reliability, and data workflows, and leading the team to engineer away recurring operational toil through maintainable code, tooling and automation.
Leading high-severity engineering incidents and making sure blameless reviews produce measurable, owned and durable improvements.
Setting technical direction for observability, SLI/SLOs, production readiness, release safety, automation, remote diagnostics and fleet tooling, and taking part in design and code reviews.
Partnering with Vehicle Software, Fleet Operations, Field Engineering, VSI/Platform Integration, Vehicle Generalization, safety, infrastructure and programme teams to move new vehicles and capabilities into stable operations.
Representing Japan’s priorities in global roadmaps, and communicating risks and decisions effectively with Japanese OEMs, suppliers, mobility partners and Wayve leaders.
🙌 You should apply if:
Essential
Engineering-management experience with direct accountability for a software, SRE, platform, systems or similarly technical team.
A track record of leading and developing a team of approximately 5–10 engineers or similarly complex multidisciplinary groups.
Practical mastery of reliability engineering, observability, incident management, release and change safety, resilience and continuous improvement.
Strong engineering depth and current credibility in design review, debugging, automation, code review and production systems.
Experience owning roadmaps, resourcing, dependencies, technical trade-offs and measurable delivery outcomes.
Evidence of hiring, coaching, developing and managing performance while creating clarity, accountability and psychological safety.
Calm, structured judgement during incidents and the ability to communicate risk clearly to senior, technical and operational stakeholders.
Willingness to work regularly onsite in the Yokohama area and join an engineering escalation rotation.
Permission to work in Japan, or eligibility for employer-supported immigration where applicable to the final hiring plan.
Desirable
Autonomous vehicles, robotics, automotive software, embedded or edge compute, safety-critical systems or large physical fleets.
Vehicle commissioning, compute or sensor integration, networking, diagnostics, data offload or over-the-air deployment.
Linux, cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, telemetry pipelines, infrastructure as code and modern observability tooling.
Building internal automation or platforms in Python, Go, Rust, TypeScript or a comparable language.
Experience collaborating with Japanese automotive manufacturers, suppliers or mobility operators in a global engineering organisation.
🌱 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 (Hiring manager screen ; 1 hours total)
Deep-dive technical interviews (SRE skills assessment, SRE programming, Team Meet ; 3 hours 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
✈️ 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
Wayve is committed to providing a fair and respectful recruitment process for all candidates, free from harassment and discrimination.
The Company has zero tolerance for sexual harassment against job applicants or similar individuals.
- All communications relating to recruitment activities are conducted through the Company's recruitment system or using an email address with the Company's domain. Employees do not use their personal email addresses or social media accounts for recruitment-related communications.
- Employees do not engage in private communications unrelated to recruitment activities, invite applicants to private meals, request or seek a personal or romantic relationship, or otherwise initiate private contact with applicants.
- Sexual remarks or conduct, physical contact, questions concerning sexual matters, and any other conduct constituting harassment are prohibited.
If you have any concerns, you can contact our consultation desk at peoplepartners@wayve.ai. All consultations are treated with strict confidentiality, your privacy will be protected, and no one will be subject to any disadvantageous treatment for raising a concern or cooperating with an inquiry.
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.