Staff Validation Systems Engineer

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.

THE ROLE

Wayve’s AI Validation Division builds trust in the Wayve AI Driver for our customers. As a Staff Validation Engineer, you will lead the development, execution, and reporting of validation for L2+ Driving Features. Collaborating with systems engineers and data scientists, you will leverage Wayve’s unique simulation and evaluation technology, and meet emerging AV industry standards as autonomy transitions to fully end-to-end learned models—helping bring the Wayve AI Driver to millions globally.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Develop and implement a comprehensive validation strategy across test modalities to assess L2+ Driving Features that are part of the Wayve AI Driver product.

- Define and implement general purpose metrics for validating on-road and simulated driving behavior.

- Define test coverage requirements and build comprehensive test suites.

- Develop acceptance criteria through collaboration with Product, Safety, and AV Engineering teams.

- Analyze test results and report findings to Release and Autonomy Engineering stakeholders.

- Identify data, simulation, and evaluation team dependencies to enable timely, scalable, and automated validation execution.

- Collaborate closely with Product, Architecture, Data, Simulation, and Autonomy leads to design and implement comprehensive yet efficient test strategies.

ABOUT YOU

To succeed as a Validation Systems Engineer at Wayve, you’ll bring the following skills and experience:

Essential

- Clear, concise communicator with excellent documentation skills.

- Strong analytical skills with experience in evidence-based decision-making.

- Hands-on experience evaluating and validating complex engineered systems — whether through simulated scenario development, real-world testing, or both.

- Experience working in autonomy for driving, robotics, or related products.

- Proficiency in Python to implement metrics and work with evaluation codebase.

- Experience with both simulated and physical testing environments for autonomous systems.

- Experience analyzing and reporting validation results.

- Demonstrated ownership driving validation concepts from ideation to implementation in ambiguous, fast-paced environments.

- Degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or a related field.

Desirable

- Background in ML, Computer Vision, Motion Planning, or Data Science.

- Experience working in autonomy for driving, robotics, or related products.

- Experience with SOTIF and safety validation.

- Skilled in evaluating and validating learned or adaptive behaviors.

- Experience with modern AI tools and agentic workflows

- Experience analyzing large datasets with SQL

- Deep understanding of driving behavior and how to measure driving performance.

This is a full-time role based in our office in Sunnyvale, CA. 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. The reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $276,100-$303,000, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.

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.