Controls Engineer
Wayve is a London-based autonomous driving company using end-to-end deep learning so its AI driver learns from camera data rather than hand-coded rules and HD maps. They're hiring a Controls Engineer to develop the vehicle control layer that turns its driving policy into safe motion, based hybrid in London. This software engineering role sits within the UK's autonomous vehicles sector.
About us
Founded in 2017, Wayve is the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems.
Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.
In our fast-paced environment big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future.
At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact.
Make Wayve the experience that defines your career!
The Role
In this role you will develop and improve the vehicle trajectory and motion controllers that translate the Wayve AI Driver outputs into safe, smooth and robust vehicle motion across different vehicle platforms and applications (both ADAS and AV). You’ll tackle cutting-edge challenges: developing principled controls approaches, implementing real time systems, testing in complex scenarios and refining our evaluation pipelines. This is a great chance to make an impact on the AV industry and grow alongside a focused team of passionate experts at the forefront of autonomous driving technology.
Key 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 behaviour, 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
Required Skills/Experience
- 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 behaviour in complex robotic systems across software and hardware
Desired Skills/Experience
- 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
This is a full-time role based in our office in London, England. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home.
Wayve is committed to creating an inclusive interview experience. If you require any accommodations or adjustments to participate fully in our interview process, please let us know.
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.
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
For US candidates only, please visit E-Verify Notice and Participation and Right to Work
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.
About Wayve
Wayve is a London-based autonomous driving company pioneering an AI-first approach to self-driving vehicles. Rather than relying on detailed 3D maps and hand-coded rules, Wayve uses end-to-end deep learning so its AI driver learns directly from camera data and real-world driving experience. The company has partnered with major automakers and logistics firms to bring its technology to production vehicles. Backed by SoftBank, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Uber, Wayve closed a landmark $1.05B Series C in 2024, the largest ever AI funding round by a European company at the time, and has been in discussions for a potential $2B follow-on round.