Roboticist, Wayve
Robot Foundation Model
$184.2-240k
+ 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
$184.2-240k
+ 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
- Experience in robot manipulation; working with robot hardware
- Experience with C++ and Python in robotics or ML environments
- Strong robotics and machine learning fundamentals, with the ability to translate research into robust systems
- Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICRA, CoRL, or IROS are highly valued
- PhD preferred; MS acceptable with strong relevant experience
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Roboticist to join the Multi-Embodiment Generalist Agent (MEGA) team within Wayve Labs as a founding member
- MEGA is building foundation models for general-purpose robots beyond self-driving vehicles. Our focus is on creating intelligent agents that can perceive, reason, move and manipulate the physical world across diverse embodiments, including mobile manipulators, dual-arm platforms and humanoids
- This is a high-impact role with genuine 0→1 ownership. You will have the opportunity to work across the entire robot stack: you will select, build, integrate, and maintain robot hardware; develop the software needed to deploy and test robot policies; and work closely with research teams to shape data collection, model evaluation, and the learning loop
- The goal is work on compelling and publishable research, but also to turn it into systems that demonstrate increasingly general, robust and useful behavior in the physical world
- You will collaborate closely with researchers, ML engineers, roboticists and hardware teams to move ambitious ideas rapidly from research hypotheses to large-scale experiments and impressive real-world capabilities
- This is a rare opportunity to help build a general robotics effort from the ground up—combining frontier foundation-model research with the immediacy and complexity of intelligence embodied in real machines
- Build, maintain, and operate robot hardware for research and deployment experiments
- Implement and maintain C++ and Python robot software, including control, planning, and ROS/ROS2-based systems
- Develop infrastructure for policy deployment, data collection, and the robot learning data flywheel
- Run experiments on robots and define data collection pilots that accelerate model development
- Debug and troubleshoot robotic software, hardware, and policy failures in lab environments
- Build comprehensive deployment and regression tests to improve reliability and repeatability
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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