Material Program Manager (Contractor)

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.  

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.  

At Wayve, 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!  

The impact you will have

We’re looking for a strong Material Program Manager to work in our supply chain team. We are looking for someone who is passionate about working with engineers to bring early stage product development to scale and building out our supply chain to meet business needs. This role will need to build relationships with a number of suppliers and partners across a broad set of industries to negotiate favorable pricing and availability. It will also work with engineering to help guide the design for manufacturing at scale and help set up production lines and quality controls that enable that scale. 

This means you will:

• Work with Engineering, Operations, and Product teams across the company to craft and embed good engineering practices that work for Wayve, coaching teams where needed. We are building something different and this means we need to adapt and find ways of working to suit.
• Manage dependencies and report blockers to ensure smooth delivery across multi-disciplinary teams, which include identifying and sourcing products or services that meet specific needs and requirements.  
• Working with engineering, help set up and manage suppliers. Own tracking of progress and coordination between parties and handoff of tasks.
• Inform the budget management for the program, liaising with the engineers and supply chain team lead on how scope and timeline affect strategic decisions.
• Manage the CTB ("clear to build") process with suppliers, contract manufacturer, workshop team, and internal stakeholders, ensuring that we have efficient process and clear visibility on our procurement strategy
• Manage the warehouse and ensure the inventory management to facilitate workshop activities, including prototype and internal fleet manufacturing.

Essential:

• Experience bringing newly developed products to scale through partner relationships
• Experienced project / program manager with the ability to influence across multiple teams 
• Ability to do cost accounting for products and negotiate improvements with scale 
• Ability to drive decision making across a broad group of internal and external stakeholders
• Experience in collaborative development between internal teams and external partners and suppliers
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to represent a broad range of tradeoffs and decisions to both working level teams and leadership
• Comfortable working in an Agile program environment with aggressive milestones

Desirable:

• Autonomous Vehicle and Automotive Experience 
• Knowledge of Import and Export operations and regulations

You will be essential to Wayve’s mission, deeply enjoy what you do, take immense pride in being a small part of something big, and love pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

This role will be based in our London King’s Cross HQ.

About you

• You have a track record of enabling multiple teams to work well together across functions and geographies, to deliver highly complex technical work.
• You have at least 5 years of experience working closely with multi-disciplinary technical teams to develop and ship products at an early stage of maturity.
• You are able to clearly communicate, and translate between product expectations and technical feasibility. You are comfortable presenting to senior stakeholders internally and externally.
• You are deeply curious about building something new and relish the idea of helping to define AV2.0 and how we build it.
• You consider yourself to have an optimistic and open-minded attitude towards solving problems and want to take on the challenge of AVs: the space-race of our generation!

This is our ideal candidate, but by no means the only candidate; we all have different strengths. If you don’t match 100% but believe you could do the job well, we would love to hear from you.

#LI-EC1

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.

For more information visit Careers at Wayve. 

To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve 

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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.