Safety System Engineer

About Us

Founded in 2017, Wayve is the 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, leaning into complex challenges to unlock groundbreaking solutions. We aim high and stay humble in our pursuit of excellence, constantly learning and evolving as we 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; we back each other to deliver impact. Make Wayve the experience that defines your career!

Your Responsibilities

• Lead the functional safety activities for Wayve’s ADS, and its integration into present and future vehicle platforms, or the integration of third‑party safety‑critical systems.
• Work with various internal and external teams to gain a deep understanding of the system under development 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 the risks to an acceptable level.
• Work with internal design teams to build a system architecture that meets the safety concept including decisions on decompositions, deriving relevant SW and external requirements.
• Support internal SW teams in implementing the safety requirements on target HW.
• Define test specifications at various levels of integration to verify and finally 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 as defined above.
• Work with the process and compliance teams to update the safety processes for certification activities.

Your Skills – Mandatory

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

Your Skills – Desirable

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

About Yourself

You are truly passionate about Safety and making the world a safer place; this is reflected in the way you choose terms appropriate to your audience, present the essence of system safety and formulate the key takeaway messages. You are pragmatic and understand the need to balance risk versus benefits, even more so in a startup environment. You are comfortable debating with other stakeholders about safety‑related trade‑offs at any level of the development process and organisation. You are a self‑starter, autonomous in thoughts but collective in action. You can think and work at various abstraction levels; you can think “blue‑sky” and pave the way for long‑term safety goals, or dive deep into technical details to provide clear guidance and solutions on the safety activities for the development of a subsystem (e.g. controller) or launching an application (robotaxi). You are confident in challenging others’ ideas and views, but equally open to constructive criticism and able to reconsider your opinions or beliefs.

This is a full‑time, office‑based role located in Sunnyvale or London, depending on the candidate's place of residence. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home. We operate core working hours so you can determine the schedule that works best for you and your team.

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