Director of AV Operations

Job Description

Who we are

Our team is the first in the world to use autonomous vehicles on public roads using end-to-end deep learning. With our multi-national world-class technical team, we’re building things differently.

We don’t think it’s scalable to tell an algorithm how to drive through hand-coded rules and expensive HD maps. Instead, we believe that using experience and data will allow our algorithms to be more intelligent: capable of easily adapting to new environments.

Our aim is to be the future of self-driving cars: the first to deploy in 100 cities across the world bringing autonomy to everyone, everywhere.

Where you will have an impact

As our Director of AV Operations you will be responsible for leading our operations team pioneering the testing and deployment of our AV2.0 driver. You will pioneer safe and industry-leading machine learning vehicle operations to harvest the highest quality data to enable company-wide, rapid technical progress towards an autonomous future. You will be a member of our extended leadership team and have a key role in building our company.

This means you will:

• Lead our operations team, including safety drivers, technicians, AV engineers, operational safety engineers and policy/regulation champions, who are a dedicated and diverse group of specialists, passionate about developing new technologies for future generations,
• Manage the sourcing, training and development of a world class team of safety drivers operating our vehicles and ensure we continue to develop and deliver world class safety driver training programme for ourselves and customers,
• Continue to push the boundaries of technology with our internal R&D fleet, working with our internal engineering team to safely test hypotheses, execute Wayve’s research objectives anywhere in the UK, and deliver meaningful data to help advance Wayve’s progress,
• Spearhead our international expansion, working with local regulators and customers to create local operational teams that are set up for success,
• Manage our commercial operations with fleet customers, meeting their service expectations and business continuity while building a safety case for driverless operation and product market fit,
• Maintain our outstanding safety record, ensuring that we test and develop this technology in a responsible manner
• Ensure we have strong and supportive regulatory relationships in each jurisdiction we operate in
• Be essential to Wayve’s mission, deeply enjoy what you do, take immense pride in being a small part of something big, and love pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

This role will be based in our London King’s Cross HQ.

What you will bring to Wayve

• You’re capable of independently problem solving, fault resolving, and working collaboratively to build platforms of teams to launch autonomous vehicles on public roads
• You have a track record embodying an innovative and empowering culture as a strong and empathetic manager
• You have experience leading a mobility operations team and are comfortable interfacing with an engineering team developing a complex technology stack
• Familiar with designing and implementing high growth org structures which horizontally scale to deliver seamless operations. You have experience managing individuals and their careers, roadmap planning, stakeholder management, requirements gathering and alignment with leadership towards milestones and deliverables.
• You understand the complexities of developing and working with safety-critical hardware and its societal implications. You have experience working with regulatory agencies, customers and members of the public to accept disruptive technologies.
• You consider yourself to have an optimistic and open-minded attitude towards solving problems and want to take on the challenge of AVs: the space-race of our generation

This is our ideal candidate, but by no means the only candidate; we all have different strengths. If you don’t match 100% but believe you could do the job well, we would love to hear from you.

What we offer you

• Competitive compensation with salary and equity
• Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs
• A position to shape the future of autonomous driving and to tackle the biggest challenges of our 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, and more!
• This is a full-time role based in our office in King’s Cross. If your role is possible to do remotely we support flexible working, including working for up to 2 weeks from anywhere in the world. We trust you to know what works best for your team and projects and ask that you have a healthy presence that enables the right meetings to happen in person and strong relationships to be built.

Wayve is built by people from all walks of life. We believe that it is our differences that make us stronger, and our unique perspectives and backgrounds that allow us to build something different. We are proud to be an equal opportunities workplace, where we don’t just embrace diversity but nurture it - so that we all thrive and grow.