Tech Lead / Manager - Trajectory Generation and Controls

Wayve Wayve · Robotics · London, United Kingdom +1 · AV Engineering

Tech Lead/Manager for Trajectory Generation and Controls team at Wayve, focusing on real-world vehicle motion for autonomous driving. The role involves leading engineers, defining technical roadmaps, and owning the interface between the AI Driver, trajectory generation, and control systems. Requires experience in managing teams, leading technical direction for physical AI systems (especially autonomous vehicles), and production system delivery. Expertise in controls, trajectory generation, and ML integration is essential.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead and develop the Motion Controls team, providing strong people leadership, technical direction, and clear priorities for an experienced and growing group of engineers.
  2. Own the team’s technical roadmap and delivery across short and long term horizons, translating product and system needs into clear priorities, technical plans, and timely execution.
  3. Own the interface between the Wayve AI Driver, trajectory generation, and control in a deployed autonomy system.
  4. Provide strong technical judgment across control, trajectory generation, and adjacent ML-informed system design, holding a high bar for engineering quality, technical rigor, deployed system performance, and motion quality.
  5. Work with key partners to align technical plans, product needs, and integration constraints in the delivery of robust deployed motion behavior.

Skills

Required

  • Experience managing or leading engineers
  • Experience leading technical direction for complex autonomy, robotics, or other physical AI systems
  • Experience building, shipping, and maintaining production systems
  • Expertise in controls, trajectory generation, motion planning
  • Strong understanding of physical system dynamics, closed-loop behavior, and controller design tradeoffs
  • Experience working on production systems that incorporate machine learning models
  • Experience working across system boundaries
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals
  • Experience delivering high-quality production code

Nice to have

  • Experience managing engineers and growing teams
  • Experience with classical search- or optimization-based motion planning, optimal control, MPC, or related motion-generation methods
  • Experience working in production release environments, ideally involving real hardware or multiple platforms
  • Experience with automotive-grade software development processes or safety-related standards such as ISO26262 or SOTIF
  • Experience with Python and C++ in production autonomy or robotics systems

What the JD emphasized

  • Experience managing or leading engineers including setting priorities, driving execution, and supporting their growth and performance.
  • Experience leading technical direction for complex autonomy, robotics, or other physical AI systems, ideally in autonomous vehicles or a closely related domain.
  • Experience building, shipping, and maintaining production systems, including translating product and system requirements into technical plans and execution.
  • Expertise in controls, trajectory generation, motion planning, or closely related autonomy problems, including strong understanding of physical system dynamics, closed-loop behavior, and controller design tradeoffs.
  • Experience working on production systems that incorporate machine learning models, ideally in domains such as prediction, trajectory generation, planning, or control.

Other signals

  • leading a team
  • technical direction
  • delivery ownership
  • controls
  • trajectory generation
  • AI Driver interface
  • ML models