Staff Validation Systems Engineer, AI Validation

Job description

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 Wayve’s engineering teams are building the AI, robotics, simulation, data, and systems foundations needed to deploy a generalisable AI Driver safely and at scale. ABOUT AI VALIDATION The AI Validation team develops the strategies, evidence, metrics, and test systems that build confidence in the Wayve AI Driver. Both locations translate ambiguous product and safety questions into validation plans, scenarios, metrics, coverage, acceptance criteria, and evidence for release decisions—but the product scope and candidate profile differ by location. This role is a TC4 individual contributor focused on L2+ driving features and new AI Driver capabilities. This includes feature-level driving behaviours, interactions between the automated-driving system and the human driver, and capabilities that extend the core driving experience. 🧠 YOUR DAY-TO-DAY - Translate product, systems, and safety requirements into validation strategies, test scenarios, metrics, coverage requirements, and acceptance criteria. - Work hands-on with Python, evaluation pipelines, test implementation, simulation, and data analysis. - Analyse results and communicate findings, risks, and evidence to Product, Safety, Release, and Autonomy Engineering stakeholders. - Coordinate data, simulation, and evaluation dependencies so validation can run reliably and at scale. - Validate L2+ feature-level driving behaviours and new AI Driver capabilities. - Evaluate interactions between the automated-driving system and the human driver. - Define general-purpose metrics for on-road and simulated driving behaviour. - Provide hands-on technical direction across teams while remaining an individual contributor. 🧩 WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON - L2+ driving features, new AI Driver capabilities, and interactions between automation and the human driver. - Feature-level behavioural metrics, simulated and real-world scenarios, evaluation pipelines, and acceptance criteria. - Evidence used to decide whether new capabilities are ready for product and release milestones. - Python-based evaluation tooling, SQL and scalable data analysis, behavioural metrics, test coverage, and automated validation execution. 🙌 YOU SHOULD APPLY IF - You have experience validating autonomous-driving, robotics, or closely related intelligent products, particularly learned or adaptive behaviours. - You are excited by L2+ feature behaviour, human–automation interaction, and new AI Driver capabilities. - You have hands-on experience building scenarios, metrics, test suites, evaluation pipelines, or data-analysis workflows. - You can use Python professionally and are comfortable with SQL or similar large-scale analysis tools. - You have validated complex systems in simulation, the real world, or both. - You communicate clearly, document decisions well, and can own ambiguous problems from concept through evidence and recommendation. - ML, computer vision, motion planning, SOTIF, safety validation, or modern AI-tooling experience is advantageous. - Direct automotive OEM experience is helpful but not essential. 🌱 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. 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+ through to L4. HOW WE WORK 💻 — LOCATIONS & FLEXIBLE WORKING This role is based in Sunnyvale. We operate a hybrid working model combining in-person collaboration with focused time working remotely. 🔍 THE INTERVIEW PROCESS - Initial call / recruiter screen (25 min) - Hiring Manager Screen (60 min) - Deep-dive technical interviews covering systems and domain expertise (4 hours) - Final interview focused on mission and values alignment (60 min) We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability. WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU (LOCATION DEPENDENT) - 💰 Salaries benchmarked against the market annually - 📈 Meaningful equity - ✈️ Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable - ✅ Hybrid working and hands-on access to workshops and labs - 📚 Learning and development support - 🩺 Comprehensive locatio