Senior Software Engineer - Runtime Platform, Robot Software

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 Robot Software team builds the software that runs across our internal vehicle fleet, enabling autonomous driving and collecting the data used to train new driving models. We deliver a reliable, stable, and flexible software stack that allows model developers and scientists to run on-road experiments, iterate quickly, and bring new autonomous-driving capabilities to life.

The Runtime Platform team owns the shared foundations that the onboard software stack depends on: application frameworks, communication middleware, application lifecycle management, system health monitoring, performance, and observability. We build reusable runtime capabilities that help engineering teams develop and operate reliable software across different vehicles, operating systems, and compute platforms.

As a Software Engineer, Runtime Platform, you’ll develop shared runtime software, investigate end-to-end performance, and help guide architectural decisions across Robot Software. Your work will help the onboard stack meet its latency, throughput, reliability, and resource requirements as it evolves and moves onto new platforms.

🧠 Your day-to-day

• Design, build, and maintain shared onboard application frameworks and developer interfaces.

• Develop application lifecycle management, health monitoring, fault reporting, and runtime diagnostics.

• Evolve Wayve’s communication middleware by evaluating technologies, migrating components, and supporting new operating systems and compute platforms.

• Investigate latency and performance bottlenecks across the full onboard software stack.

• Instrument software with profiling tools and metrics to identify optimisation opportunities.

• Collaborate with engineering teams to understand performance pain points and prioritise improvements by impact.

• Work with internal teams and middleware suppliers to resolve integration issues and establish shared APIs, documentation, and best practices.

🧩 What you’ll be working on

• Shared runtime services and application frameworks used across Robot Software.

• Communication middleware and high-throughput, low-latency inter-process communication.

• Application lifecycle, system health monitoring, fault reporting, and runtime resource management.

• End-to-end profiling across OS scheduling, memory hierarchy, CPU caches, context switching, thread synchronisation, and critical code paths.

• New profiling and instrumentation tools for benchmarking system performance and establishing baselines.

• Automated benchmarks and CI checks that detect performance regressions and validate runtime behaviour across supported platforms.

• Ports and integrations across new operating systems, vehicle compute, and hardware platforms.

• Observability infrastructure for logs, metrics, traces, and fleet-level performance analysis.

🙌 You should apply if

• You have strong software-development experience in C++.

• You are proficient with performance-profiling tools and techniques for finding and resolving system bottlenecks.

• You have a proven, methodical approach to designing experiments and evaluating results.

• You have a strong foundation in OS scheduling, computer architecture, memory hierarchy, CPU caches, context switching, and thread synchronisation.

• You have developed or maintained middleware, application frameworks, communication infrastructure, lifecycle management, or shared runtime services.

• You can design maintainable interfaces and help multiple engineering teams integrate and adopt shared software components.

• You can collaborate across teams to turn performance data into clear architectural and optimisation decisions.

Deep experience with communication middleware or application-framework design would be especially valuable. Experience porting systems software across operating systems and hardware platforms, building automated performance benchmarks in CI, or using NVIDIA tools such as Nsight, Lumos, and tegrastat is also relevant. Familiarity with Grafana, Databricks, Datadog, QNX, or Momentics is 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. 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 the shift from horses to cars, and from human driven vehicles to intelligent machines.

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 plus through to L4 as our core AI model scales. In a race increasingly defined by intelligence and real world learning, Wayve is taking a distinct approach, building a generalisable driving intelligence that can power any vehicle, anywhere. By combining embodied AI with scalable deployment, we are creating technology that can be shaped to each OEM brand and driver experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.

How we work 💻- Locations & Flexible Working:

Our main hubs are in London, Sunnyvale, Yokohama, Herzliya, Vancouver and Leonberg. We operate a hybrid working model that combines in-person collaboration in our dedicated office spaces with focused time working remotely. This gives our teams the connection and energy of working together, alongside the flexibility to do their best work in a way that fits their lives.

🔍 The Interview Process:

Our process is clear and respectful of your time:

• Initial recruiter screen — 25 mins

• Competency Interviews — Programming and technical domain interviews (2 hours)

• Deep-dive technical interviews — Programming, hiring manager, and software design interviews (3 hours)

• Final interview: Mission & values alignment (30 mins)

We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.

What’s in it for you (Location dependant):

💰 Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
📈 Meaningful equity, sharing in the ownership and long term success of Wayve
✈️ Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable
✅ Hybrid working, core hours and the chance to work hands on in vehicle workshops and labs
📚 Learning and development budgets with support for training, conferences and growth
🩺 Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension where applicable, access to therapists, wellbeing partnerships, team socials and more

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.

At Wayve we're committed to creating a diverse, fair and respectful culture that is inclusive of everyone based on their unique skills and perspectives, and regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law.

For more information visit Careers at Wayve. To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve

DISCLAIMER: We will not ask about marriage or pregnancy, care responsibilities or disabilities in any of our job adverts or interviews. However, we do look to capture information about care responsibilities, and disabilities among other diversity information as part of an optional DEI Monitoring form to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring process and ensure that the process is inclusive and non-discriminatory.