Senior Data Scientist, Wayve
$209.7-266.8k
+ Equity
2-5 days a week in office (Sunnyvale, CA)
Autonomous mobility driven by AI
Be an early applicant
Autonomous mobility driven by AI
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$209.7-266.8k
+ Equity
2-5 days a week in office (Sunnyvale, CA)
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To reimagine autonomous mobility with embodies intelligence, aiming to lead the world into a new era of autonomy.
Role
Who you are
- 3+ years experience working in a Data Science role
- Fluent in querying and building large datasets, writing production-level SQL for use in data-transformation pipelines
- Prior experience designing robust real-world experiments (e.g. A/B) and critically evaluating test-statistics
- Foundations in the fundamentals behind statistics: testing appropriate distributions, testing the assumptions behind frequentist stats
- Proficient in using a statistical scripting language and data science/ML packages (e.g. python such as pandas, sklearn, statsmodels, scipy or R such as dplyr, caret, stats)
- Well-versed in summarising, visualising and communicating findings in an accessible and compelling way
- Track record of influencing team direction through your findings
- A bias towards deriving actionable insight that can be used to drive prioritisation and strategy for others
- Comfortable working asynchronously across time zones with cross-functional partners
- You are deeply curious about building something new and relish the idea of helping to define AV2.0 and how we build it
- 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
Desirable
- Practical experience with machine learning (e.g. PyTorch). Passion to take research ideas to production
- Track record of promoting statistical rigour and experimental best practices in your prior roles
- Prior experience using causal inference/econometric techniques and bayesian methodologies for hypothesis testing
- Prior experience using large datasets with distributed computing (e.g. spark, hadoop or other map-reduce tech)
- Experience working in a fast-moving tech company or startup
What the job involves
- As a Data Scientist supporting AI engineers, you will partner with one or more engineering teams, developing actionable insights that guide improvements to the Wayve AI Driver. Using experimental and observational analyses of real and simulated driving, you will help teams advance the functionality, safety, and performance of the Wayve AI Driver, helping to advance Wayve as the leader in end-to-end AI for autonomous mobility
- Formulate and iterate upon the performance metrics that organize our engineering efforts and guide progress toward commercial success
- Design experiments and targeted off-road measurements to ensure that we deliver product requirements to customers while maintaining safety and performance
- Investigate factors in model training and inference leading to bottlenecks in functionality and performance, identifying and validating hypotheses for unlocking improvements
Our take
Wayve is developing AI that teaches cars to drive autonomously using reinforcement learning, simulation, and computer vision. Wayve’s core premise is that the big breakthrough in self-driving cars will come from better AI brains rather than more sensors or “hand-coded” rules which it believes are highly restrictive and not at all scalable.
The company said that it trains its autonomous driving system using simulated environments and then transfers that knowledge into the real world, where it emulates how humans adapt to conditions in real time. It ultimately relies on end-to-end deep learning AI rather than hard-engineered AI. This is one of the world's hardest problems to solve, but Wayve has made an exciting start and is taking a very different approach to competitors like Uber and Waymo, who are relying more on sensors.
Following a few years of innovative breakthroughs, Wayve now has backing from high-profile investors such as Microsoft and angels, including Uber's chief scientist Zoubin Ghahramani and Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley robotics professor and pioneer of deep reinforcement learning. The company's strategic partnerships with outfits like Asda and Ocado to test-run autonomous deliveries, as well as publicity through the Minister is a show of confidence in the future of Wayve's solution to autonomous driving.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Apr 2026
$60m
SERIES D
Feb 2026
$1.2bn
SERIES D
Total funding: $2.6bn
Company benefits
- Private healthcare: Choose our optional health insurance for comprehensive coverage for you and your family.
- Paid time off: Paid vacation plus public holidays and additional leave programs, ensuring you have time to unwind.
- Mental health resources: Through Spill, you can access therapy and mental health support.
- Community and socials: Join clubs or attend team socials to connect over hobbies, sports, or just for fun.
- Competitive compensation: Our compensation package includes cash and equity, making you a true partner in our success.
- Learning and development: Budgets for books, courses, and company-wide training to support your continuous growth.
Company HQ
London, UK
Leadership
Alex Kendall
(Co-Founder & CEO)Alex has a PhD from Cambridge in Computer Vision & Robotics. Prior to Wayve, he was a Research Fellow at Trinity College, a Scientific Advisor at Scape Technologies, a Research Engineer at Skydio, and a Software Engineer at Beca.
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