Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data Curation & Dataset Strategy

About the role

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 datasets Team

Wayve's datasets team own the driving data that our AI Driver learns from, covering ingestion, annotation, retrieval and data quality. As our data grows from hundreds of petabytes towards exabyte scale, deciding what we keep, and where, is one of the biggest levers on both model quality and cost. This role sits at the centre of that challenge, shaping the data that model engineers train on across the company.

🧠 Your day-to-day

Build and own the ingestion-time model that scores incoming driving data and routes it to hot, cold, archive or delete

Work with training teams to define the right data distributions for every model we're building

Deliver early storage-cost savings through practical heuristics, then develop ML-driven filtering

Partner with ingestion, annotation, retrieval, data quality, model training, AV/robotics, evaluation and storage teams to set company-wide data policy

Lead and work hands-on with a small group of software and ML engineers to build data provisioning and data provenance features into Corpus

🧩 What you’ll be working on

Defining our dataset content strategy: which data and metadata we need, and why, so training teams can select the most valuable data as smoothly as possible

Steering data selection by what our model engineers need right now. For example, if we're weak at unprotected right turns at traffic lights, those scenarios go straight to hot storage

Delivering large, measurable storage-cost savings as ingestion scales across our internal fleet and partner and OEM data

Evolving from practical heuristics to ML-driven filtering, and influencing what gets filtered at the vehicle and edge

Working as a pair with our Corpus Implementation Engineer to turn strategy into production systems

🙌 You should apply if

You have strong autonomous-vehicle or robotics experience, working with large-scale driving, sensor or comparable data

You're a principal, hands-on ML engineer who has built models that score, select or filter data

You've operated at petabyte scale and are comfortable with the engineering that comes with it

You're strong in Python and Spark, with large-scale cloud data experience

You have strong quantitative intuition and use it to make practical, measurable decisions

You're pragmatic and high-ownership, and can set direction across several teams without direct authority

You bring experience in data selection, retention or filtering for model training, edge or vehicle-side filtering, computer vision or high-volume IoT data, or leading small cross-functional groups (any of these is a bonus)

🌱 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 call / recruiter screen (30 mins)

Intro with the hiring manager (1 hour)

Competency interviews: system design and technical leadership (2 hours total)

Deep dive: domain interview (1 hour)

Final interview: mission & values alignment (1 hour)

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.