Senior Field Engineer

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 Field Engineering Team Our Field Engineering team is an operational backbone for Wayve, providing hands-on technical support for our global fleet operations. The team resolves complex technical issues, supports scaling of cutting-edge autonomous vehicle platforms, and acts as a key link between in-country operations, engineering, and product teams. We are responsible for maintaining the safety, reliability, and operational excellence of our vehicles, ensuring seamless collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. 🧠 Your day-to-day As a Senior Field Engineer, you will act as a hands-on, senior individual contributor working with significant autonomy on complex and ambiguous problems. You will report directly to the in-country Field Engineering Lead, acting as their key operational enabler and escalation point. Day-to-day, you’ll lead resolution of challenging vehicle software and hardware issues, provide cross-regional escalation support, set technical priorities for your team, and own projects, processes, or systems end-to-end. You’ll be the first responder for high-severity geo-specific faults, champion safety-first decision-making, and maintain close collaboration with Field Engineering and Fleet Service leadership. 🧩 What you’ll be working on - Technical leadership and serving as the escalation point for complex vehicle software and hardware issues within your region and across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. - Using judgement to decide when to apply established solutions versus when to innovate, seeking guidance from the Field Engineering Lead as needed. - Setting day-to-day technical priorities and mentoring other Field Engineers during complex investigations. - Acting as operational stand-in for the Field Engineering Lead when required, ensuring execution continuity. - Owning projects, processes, or systems from problem definition through delivery and global adoption. - Identifying and driving solutions for recurring fleet issues, operational bottlenecks, or reliability risks. - Driving improvements to tooling, workflows, and operational practices with cross-functional teams. - Acting as liaison between Field Engineering and cross-functional stakeholders during incidents and projects, including leading technical meetings. - Clearly documenting technical learnings to strengthen global field operations and championing continuous improvement. 🙌 You should apply if Essential: - Advanced technical expertise diagnosing complex vehicle software and hardware issues in fleet, automotive, robotics, or ADAS environments. - Familiarity with software debugging concepts: logs, deployments, configurations, system states, and failure modes. - Proven ability to solve problems independently and make sound technical decisions in ambiguous scenarios. - Experience leading technical initiatives and setting priorities without formal people management responsibility. - Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of projects, processes, or systems. - Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams and global regions. - Deep understanding of safety protocols, incident management, and operational governance. - Experience with vehicle diagnostic tools, monitoring platforms (e.g., Datadog, Mender), and ticketing systems such as JIRA. - Comfortable working in a shift-based, 24/7 global support environment, including weekends and holidays. Desirable: - Experience supporting or leading on-road testing operations. - Strong understanding of ADAS or autonomous vehicle systems. - Background in collaborating with software engineering teams in fleet or production contexts. - Experience acting as a senior, deputy, or lead-in-practice within technical teams. 🌱 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 th