Wayve Technologies Ltd.
Tech Lead - Pretraining Team, Wayve Foundation Model Sunnyvale
Wayve Technologies Ltd. - Sunnyvale, California, United States, 94087
Work at Wayve Technologies Ltd.
Overview
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Overview
Tech Lead - Pretraining Team, Wayve Foundation Model
Sunnyvale 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. About us
Founded in 2017, Wayve is the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems. Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.
In our fast-paced environment big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future. At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact. Make Wayve the experience that defines your career! The role
This is a rare opportunity to lead foundational work at the intersection of large-scale pretraining and embodied AI. You’ll shape how Wayve curates and experiments with data to pretrain the next generation of multi-modal foundation models for autonomy. Working at the frontier of a still-undefined field, you’ll collaborate with research and engineering teams to define what “good data” looks like for embodied systems — and work with engineering teams to build the infrastructure to scale it. Your work will directly influence the performance, generalization, and capabilities of Wayve’s AI stack. Key responsibilities: Lead data curation, enrichment, and filtering efforts for large-scale pretraining of embodied models Build and manage distributed data processing and ingestion pipelines across modalities Partner with research teams to run data-centric experiments and influence model training strategy Identify, integrate, and leverage third-party datasets to enhance pretraining and evaluation Manage and mentor a team of engineers and data scientists to deliver scientific and technical impact What you’ll bring to Wayve
In order to set you up for success as a Tech Lead / Tech Lead Manager at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience: Leadership in data-centric AI : Experience leading research or engineering teams focused on dataset curation, filtering, or enrichment at scale, particularly for large-scale model pretraining. Contributions to data benchmarks or tools : Involvement in projects like DataComp, LAION, DINO, MOLMO, or equivalent initiatives that define or evaluate pretraining dataset quality. Deep understanding of distributed data processing : Strong working knowledge of frameworks such as Ray, Spark, Dask, or equivalent, and designing scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines. Hands-on deep learning expertise : Strong proficiency in PyTorch and a solid grasp of how data quality, distribution, and structure impact training dynamics and model generalisation. Experimental mindset : Demonstrated ability to run and interpret data-centric experiments (e.g., small-scale trials, ablations) to inform large-scale model training. Collaboration with research : Experience working closely with ML researchers and contributing to experimental design, pretraining strategies, or evaluation design. Minimum 5 years of relevant industry experience : Including at least several years in data-heavy, model-driven environments involving deep learning at scale.
Nice to have
Track record of research impact : Publications in top-tier conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL, or equivalent, especially in data-centric learning, representation learning, or self-supervised learning. People management experience : Track record managing ~5 direct reports in a research or research-leaning engineering environment; skilled in team development, prioritization, and technical alignment. Experience with multi-modal or embodied systems : Familiarity with datasets involving video, language, lidar, radar and generally sensor fusion or embodied perception and control. Tooling and infrastructure know-how : Familiarity with modern data versioning, annotation, and orchestration tools (e.g., Weights & Biases, ClearML, Labelbox, Airflow, Metaflow, etc.). Autonomous systems exposure : While prior AV or robotics experience is not required, a demonstrated interest in embodied intelligence or real-world agent learning is a plus. Systems thinking and data-product intuition : Ability to reason about upstream data decisions and their downstream effects on models, infrastructure, and product goals. What we offer you
Attractive compensation with salary and equity Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time Bespoke learning and development opportunities Relocation support with visa sponsorship Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more! This is a full-time role based in our office in Sunnyvale. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home. We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. If you’re passionate about self-driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world, we encourage you to apply. 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. Apply for this job
* indicates a required field First Name * Last Name * Email * Phone * Location (City) * Resume/CV * Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf Education School Select... Degree Select... LinkedIn Profile When are you available to start? * Do you require sponsorship? * Select... What is your preferred pronoun? I acknowledge Wayve's Privacy Policy Notice * Select... Learn more about how we handle your data for recruiting purposes in our privacy notice: * Select... https://wayve.ai/recruitment-privacy-notice/ What is the most interesting topic you're exploring and curious about in Science Research right now? Do you have multiple years of machine learning algorithm development experience? * Select... Are you comfortable commuting into one of our offices 2-3 days a week? * Select... Wayve US Demographic Questions
Wayve is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture for our employees. It is crucial for us to understand the demographics of our candidate pool to measure our recruitment practices. There is no requirement for any candidate to answer our demographic questions. For candidates who complete the questionnaire, their data will be anonymized and used only in the aggregate to inform our attraction strategy. Wayve is an equal opportunity employer and this data will be used for opportunity monitoring purposes. What is your gender identity Select... Which age group do you belong to? Select... What is your ethnicity? Select... Do you consider yourself to have a disability or long-term health condition? (including, but not limited to: visual and hearing impairments, mobility impairments, autism, diabetes, epilepsy, dyslexia, mental health conditions, and major illnesses) Select... What is your sexual orientation? Select... Are you a veteran or active member of the United States Armed Forces? Select...
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Sunnyvale 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. About us
Founded in 2017, Wayve is the leading developer of Embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems. Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.
In our fast-paced environment big problems ignite us—we embrace uncertainty, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we pave the way for a smarter, safer future. At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment; we back each other to deliver impact. Make Wayve the experience that defines your career! The role
This is a rare opportunity to lead foundational work at the intersection of large-scale pretraining and embodied AI. You’ll shape how Wayve curates and experiments with data to pretrain the next generation of multi-modal foundation models for autonomy. Working at the frontier of a still-undefined field, you’ll collaborate with research and engineering teams to define what “good data” looks like for embodied systems — and work with engineering teams to build the infrastructure to scale it. Your work will directly influence the performance, generalization, and capabilities of Wayve’s AI stack. Key responsibilities: Lead data curation, enrichment, and filtering efforts for large-scale pretraining of embodied models Build and manage distributed data processing and ingestion pipelines across modalities Partner with research teams to run data-centric experiments and influence model training strategy Identify, integrate, and leverage third-party datasets to enhance pretraining and evaluation Manage and mentor a team of engineers and data scientists to deliver scientific and technical impact What you’ll bring to Wayve
In order to set you up for success as a Tech Lead / Tech Lead Manager at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience: Leadership in data-centric AI : Experience leading research or engineering teams focused on dataset curation, filtering, or enrichment at scale, particularly for large-scale model pretraining. Contributions to data benchmarks or tools : Involvement in projects like DataComp, LAION, DINO, MOLMO, or equivalent initiatives that define or evaluate pretraining dataset quality. Deep understanding of distributed data processing : Strong working knowledge of frameworks such as Ray, Spark, Dask, or equivalent, and designing scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines. Hands-on deep learning expertise : Strong proficiency in PyTorch and a solid grasp of how data quality, distribution, and structure impact training dynamics and model generalisation. Experimental mindset : Demonstrated ability to run and interpret data-centric experiments (e.g., small-scale trials, ablations) to inform large-scale model training. Collaboration with research : Experience working closely with ML researchers and contributing to experimental design, pretraining strategies, or evaluation design. Minimum 5 years of relevant industry experience : Including at least several years in data-heavy, model-driven environments involving deep learning at scale.
Nice to have
Track record of research impact : Publications in top-tier conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, CoRL, or equivalent, especially in data-centric learning, representation learning, or self-supervised learning. People management experience : Track record managing ~5 direct reports in a research or research-leaning engineering environment; skilled in team development, prioritization, and technical alignment. Experience with multi-modal or embodied systems : Familiarity with datasets involving video, language, lidar, radar and generally sensor fusion or embodied perception and control. Tooling and infrastructure know-how : Familiarity with modern data versioning, annotation, and orchestration tools (e.g., Weights & Biases, ClearML, Labelbox, Airflow, Metaflow, etc.). Autonomous systems exposure : While prior AV or robotics experience is not required, a demonstrated interest in embodied intelligence or real-world agent learning is a plus. Systems thinking and data-product intuition : Ability to reason about upstream data decisions and their downstream effects on models, infrastructure, and product goals. What we offer you
Attractive compensation with salary and equity Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time Bespoke learning and development opportunities Relocation support with visa sponsorship Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more! This is a full-time role based in our office in Sunnyvale. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home. We understand that everyone has a unique set of skills and experiences and that not everyone will meet all of the requirements listed above. If you’re passionate about self-driving cars and think you have what it takes to make a positive impact on the world, we encourage you to apply. 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. Apply for this job
* indicates a required field First Name * Last Name * Email * Phone * Location (City) * Resume/CV * Enter manually Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf Education School Select... Degree Select... LinkedIn Profile When are you available to start? * Do you require sponsorship? * Select... What is your preferred pronoun? I acknowledge Wayve's Privacy Policy Notice * Select... Learn more about how we handle your data for recruiting purposes in our privacy notice: * Select... https://wayve.ai/recruitment-privacy-notice/ What is the most interesting topic you're exploring and curious about in Science Research right now? Do you have multiple years of machine learning algorithm development experience? * Select... Are you comfortable commuting into one of our offices 2-3 days a week? * Select... Wayve US Demographic Questions
Wayve is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture for our employees. It is crucial for us to understand the demographics of our candidate pool to measure our recruitment practices. There is no requirement for any candidate to answer our demographic questions. For candidates who complete the questionnaire, their data will be anonymized and used only in the aggregate to inform our attraction strategy. Wayve is an equal opportunity employer and this data will be used for opportunity monitoring purposes. What is your gender identity Select... Which age group do you belong to? Select... What is your ethnicity? Select... Do you consider yourself to have a disability or long-term health condition? (including, but not limited to: visual and hearing impairments, mobility impairments, autism, diabetes, epilepsy, dyslexia, mental health conditions, and major illnesses) Select... What is your sexual orientation? Select... Are you a veteran or active member of the United States Armed Forces? Select...
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