Lead Technical Program Manager (Data)

• As the Lead Technical Program Manager for Data at Wayve, you’ll build and lead the technical program management function for our Data org - the data platform, ingestion, standardisation pipelines, and the enrichment, curation, and labelling that fuel the AI Driver. The data corpus is also critical for teams working on simulation and validation
• You’ll be the delivery partner to engineering leadership for data teams and drive the department wide objective to “make valuable data immediately and reliably usable”
• You will leading flagship programs yourself while supporting and coaching a small, high-impact TPM team. Your impact is measured in data quality, throughput, cost, and how predictably the data that powers every model lands. A successful TPM leader is a force multiplier - helping teams move faster, more effectively, and with purpose
• Lead the function: Build, coach, and grow a small TPM team; hire to fill gaps and raise the bar
• Own data delivery: Partner with Data leadership on planning, prioritisation, and execution across the data roadmap
• Trusted partner for Engineering: You are a leader in the org. You will maintain the partnership with Engineering leaders to land big outcomes, pushing teams to land impact with high leverage and hold leaders to account
• Drive flagship programs directly: Data platform, data pipelines, enrichment & curation, labelling / annotation, and dataset management and quality
• Establish scalable practices: Planning cadences, governance, KPIs and dashboards, escalations and operational reviews
• Align cross-functionally: Work with data, ML, engineering, and external data / annotation suppliers; manage dependencies, risk, and trade-offs
• Connect to outcomes and represent the data org: Tie delivery to data quality, throughput, cost and time-to-insight, and represent the data org in company-level reviews

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.

In order to set you up for success as a Lead Technical Program Manager, Data at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience. (The first four are our must-haves.)Strategic & business impact: You link data investment to measurable outcomes - quality, throughput, costTechnically strong: Credible with engineers on data platforms, pipelines, and large-scale data infrastructure, even though you won’t write production code. Experience with distributed data platforms at Petabyte scale8+ years in data: Deep, hands‑on experience delivering data programs as a technical program manager - data platform, pipelines, enrichment / curation, labelling - including people and process leadership. You’ve built or scaled a program function and you get things done with ownership and a bias for actionStays neutral and adapts under pressure: Effective in ambiguous, fast-moving environments; you flex your style and bring structure without slowing deliverySolid understanding of Machine Learning, GPUs and training and inference of 500M-20B parameter modelsExperience with data ingestion from raw data to processing through different stages and pipelines. Understands Directed Acyclic Graphs, their usage and challengesProficient with AI Agents to accelerate execution: eg. Cursor, Claude, CodexClear, data-driven communicator: You set direction with clarity and steer with the right metricsExceptional cross‑functional leadership: You align and influence across data, ML, and engineering without relying on authoritySystems thinking: You reason about how the parts of a complex data system fit together, and how a change in one area ripples into othersPeople leadership: You build, coach, and grow high‑performing teams, and raise the bar on the craftGrowth mindset: Open to feedback and always looking to improveProduct‑minded: You focus on outcomes and the people your programs serve - prioritising by impact and defining what good looks like, not just tracking activityProficient with some or all of Databricks, Flyte, Ray, Kubernetes, Azure, Docker, PythonWorking experience with a large scale distributed data platform used by 100s of engineers and researchersWe 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 applyBackground in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or another large-scale data / ML programAn engineering or computer science degree, or experience working as an engineer; fluent with modern delivery tooling (e.g. Jira)