Safety System Engineer

About Wayve

Founded in 2017, Wayve is a leading developer of embodied AI technology. Our advanced AI software and foundation models enable vehicles to perceive, understand, and navigate any complex environment, enhancing the usability and safety of automated driving systems. Our vision is to create autonomy that propels the world forward. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic AI products are designed for automakers, accelerating the transition from assisted to automated driving.

In our fast‑paced environment, big problems ignite us — we embrace uncertainty, lean into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions, aim high, stay humble, and constantly learn and evolve to pave the way for a smarter, safer future. At Wayve, your contributions matter. We value diversity, embrace new perspectives, and foster an inclusive work environment, backing each other to deliver impact.

Your Responsibilities

• Lead the functional safety activities for Wayve’s ADS and its integration into present and future vehicle platforms, as well as the integration of third‑party safety‑critical systems.
• Work with various internal and external teams to build the Item Definition work product for each platform.
• Conduct risk assessments (HARAs, FMEAs, FTAs) to identify risks and build a safety concept to mitigate them to an acceptable level.
• Work with internal design teams to build a system architecture that meets the safety concept, including decisions on decompositions and deriving relevant software and external requirements.
• Support internal software teams in implementing the safety requirements on target hardware.
• Define test specifications at various levels of integration to verify and validate the safety concept.
• Define the safety case by building a structured claims, arguments, and evidence‑based paradigm.
• Contribute to developing the safety work products for production projects with similar activities.
• Work with the process and compliance teams to update the safety processes for certification activities.

Mandatory Skills

• Very good understanding of the functional safety development process as per ISO 26262, with a minimum of 5 years of experience applying the standard to different automotive systems; in particular parts 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9.
• Experience conducting vehicle‑level testing activities at proving grounds to verify and validate the safety concept.

Desirable Skills

• Expertise in ISO 26262‑6: practical experience developing or leading the development of ISO 26262‑compliant production software and qualifying software tools.
• Experience managing suppliers of safety‑related hardware or software elements (design, audit, assessment, project management).
• Knowledge and experience developing the safety case for an AD system, including:
• Experience developing a safety concept for a computer‑vision based system.
• Sufficient knowledge of neural networks (architectures, algorithms, training and testing pipelines) to understand safety assurance challenges and discuss options with scientists.
• Experience in SOTIF, especially identifying SOTIF triggering conditions through analysis and defining testing and validation strategies.
• Operational safety experience, such as identifying operational risks and designing training and operational procedures for public‑road testing, is a plus.

About Yourself

• Passionate about safety and making the world a safer place.
• Pragmatic, balancing risk versus benefits, especially in a startup environment.
• Comfortable debating safety‑related trade‑offs with stakeholders at any level of development and organization.
• Self‑starter, autonomous in thought but collective in action.
• Able to think and work at various abstraction levels – from blue‑sky strategic safety goals to deep technical details guiding subsystems or launching applications.
• Confident in challenging ideas and open to constructive criticism, willing to reconsider opinions or beliefs.

Location & Work Arrangement

This is a full‑time, office‑based role located in Sunnyvale, California or London, United Kingdom, depending on the candidate’s residence. We operate a hybrid working policy that combines time in our offices and workshops with time working from home. Core working hours are flexible to accommodate teams.

Inclusive Interview Experience

Wayve is committed to creating an inclusive interview experience. If you require accommodations or adjustments to participate fully in the interview process, please let us know.

Equal Opportunity Employment

We are committed to a diverse, fair and respectful culture that is inclusive of everyone based on 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 any other basis protected by applicable law.