Technical Director, Safety Case

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. TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, SAFETY CASE 🛡️ About our Safety Team As Technical Director, Safety Case, you’ll own the architecture, strategy and integrity of Wayve’s safety cases for our first products. The role sits independently from Engineering and Product and reports into Safety Management & Assurance, providing senior expert safety oversight while working closely with the teams responsible for designing, developing, validating and releasing our products. You’ll act as the architect of the safety case—defining the top-level claims, argumentation structure, evidence strategy and assurance approach that connect product intent, system behaviour, AI performance, engineering controls, validation and operational deployment into a coherent safety argument. 🧠 Your day-to-day You’ll provide independent challenge and advice while enabling Engineering and Product teams to own and deliver the safety evidence required for their systems. You’ll move between top-level safety strategy and detailed technical evidence, identifying gaps and weak assumptions early enough to influence product decisions. You’ll work across Product, Systems Engineering, AI/ML, Validation, Vehicle Engineering, Software, Hardware and Operational Safety to ensure requirements, architectures, validation plans and release criteria remain aligned with the safety case. You’ll also provide senior leadership and safety governance forums with an independent, evidence-based view of whether the safety argument is sufficiently strong to support release and deployment decisions. 🧩 What you’ll be working on: - Owning the safety case strategy and architecture for Wayve’s robotaxi and OEM ADAS products. - Defining top-level safety claims, argumentation, evidence structures and traceability from safety requirements through validation and deployment decisions. - Developing safety arguments appropriate for AI-enabled autonomous driving, incorporating functional safety, SOTIF, AI safety, cybersecurity, validation, operational safety and post-deployment monitoring. - Evolving reusable safety case approaches as Wayve’s products, vehicle platforms and evidence base mature. - Partnering with Product, Systems Engineering, AI/ML, Validation, Vehicle Engineering, Software, Hardware and Operational Safety to define safety requirements and evidence expectations. - Identifying gaps, assumptions and weaknesses in the safety argument early and driving their resolution with accountable teams. - Ensuring product requirements, architecture, validation plans and release criteria remain aligned with the safety case. - Supporting technical and programme leaders in making proportionate, evidence-based safety decisions. - Providing independent technical challenge of safety cases and supporting evidence. - Assessing whether safety arguments are coherent, complete, evidence-backed and sufficient to support release or deployment. - Highlighting material gaps, uncertainties, dependencies, residual risks and safety red lines, and providing clear recommendations to safety governance forums and senior leadership. - Building a common understanding of safety case principles across Wayve and coaching Engineering and Product leaders on structured safety argumentation, evidence quality and traceability. - Representing the safety case perspective in internal governance, customer and technical discussions. - Contributing to Wayve’s broader safety strategy and assurance capability. Success in this role means establishing a clear and credible safety case architecture for Wayve’s first robotaxi and OEM ADAS products. Engineering and Product teams will understand the safety claims they support and the evidence they own, while gaps and weak assumptions will be identified early enough to influence product decisions. Wayve’s safety argument for AI-enabled autonomous driving will be technically rigorous, scalable and capable of standing up to scrutiny from customers, regulators and independent assessors. 🙌 You should apply if: - You have deep experience developing or owning safety cases for complex safety-critical systems, ideally within autonomous vehicles, ADAS, robotics, aerospace, defence or another software-intensive domain. - You have a strong systems engineering background spanning requirements, architecture, verification, validation and safety assurance. - You have demonstrated the ability to translate complex technical evidence into structured safety claims and arguments. - You have a strong understanding of autonomous driving and AI/ML safety, including model performance, data, uncertainty and the limitations of conventional verifica