Senior Product Lifecycle Manager

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 Program Management Team Wayve’s Program Management team turns complex technical goals into coordinated delivery. Working closely with engineering, product, safety and validation teams, we align priorities, manage dependencies and bring clarity to ambiguous challenges. We combine technical depth with cross-functional leadership to help teams move faster, more predictably and with purpose—focusing on meaningful outcomes rather than process for its own sake. As Senior Product Lifecycle Manager, you’ll connect Wayve’s product milestones to the detailed technical plans, system-level artefacts and readiness evidence needed to deliver them. You’ll lead complex, multi-team programmes from one milestone to the next, ensuring teams work from a shared, credible plan across our Level 2 and Level 4 products. 🧠 Your day-to-day - Partner with engineering and product leads to translate product milestones into integrated cross-team schedules, priorities and delivery plans. - Review technical progress, backlog health, dependencies and system-level evidence to determine whether programmes are ready to move forward. - Identify technical risks and sequencing bottlenecks early, then drive the decisions and mitigation plans needed to protect delivery. - Facilitate difficult conversations around scope, resources and competing priorities, helping teams reach clear and practical decisions. - Adapt plans quickly as technical understanding, product priorities or delivery constraints change. - Communicate programme status, schedule changes, risks and decisions clearly and proactively across technical teams and senior stakeholders. 🧩 What you’ll be working on: - Owning and maintaining integrated lifecycle plans for complex Level 2 and Level 4 product milestones, creating a clear source of truth across teams. - Managing cross-team dependencies and critical-path activities across engineering, product, safety, verification and validation. - Managing system-level artefacts throughout the product lifecycle, ensuring the right information and evidence are available at each milestone. - Establishing clear milestone-readiness criteria and using technical status, metrics and backlog data to support evidence-based delivery decisions. - Aligning programme scope, sequencing and resource decisions with Wayve’s strategic and commercial priorities. - Improving lifecycle-planning practices and tooling so teams can identify risk earlier, coordinate more effectively and deliver with greater predictability. 🙌 You should apply if: - You have 5+ years of experience leading complex, multi-team technical or product programmes, with responsibility for planning, execution and delivery across several engineering teams. - You bring a strong background in the automotive or autonomous-vehicle industry and understand the complexity of delivering integrated vehicle and software products. - You have the technical depth to work closely with engineers, evaluate complex system architectures and challenge delivery plans constructively—not simply track execution. - You think in systems, understanding how technical decisions, dependencies and changes in one area affect downstream teams and product outcomes. - You’re decisive under uncertainty and can make sound prioritisation and trade-off recommendations with incomplete or evolving information. - You have a strong track record of identifying delivery, technical and dependency risks early and driving them through to resolution. - You use metrics, technical evidence and backlog health to assess readiness and guide programme decisions. - You’re product-minded and outcome-focused, connecting delivery decisions to customer value and business impact rather than process completion alone. - You can facilitate challenging stakeholder conversations, resolve conflicting technical priorities and create alignment without relying on formal authority. - You communicate clearly in writing and in conversation, tailoring complex programme information for both technical and business audiences. - You’re proficient with Jira, Confluence and modern backlog, planning and programme-management tools. - Experience working in a safety-critical, regulated or complex multi-stakeholder environment would be valuable. - A programme-management qualification such as PMP, CAPM or PRINCE2 would be a plus. 🌱 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.