SWE Tech Lead, OS and Kernel

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. 

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!  

The role 

The Robot Software team is responsible for the software that runs on our internal fleet of vehicles to enable autonomous driving and collect data for training new driving models. As the Tech Lead, you will join and technically lead a motivated and talented team of engineers to deliver a reliable, stable and flexible software stack to support on-road experimentation by our model developers and scientists. You will partner with a first class Engineering Manager to ensure success of the overall team.  Your work will enable these teams to iterate quickly and gather the data they need to improve our autonomous driving capabilities and support new product features, which is critical to the success of Wayve’s mission.

The OS & Kernel team within Robot Software are the curators of Wayve's bespoke Linux distribution, which is installed across our ever-expanding development fleet. The team works closely with various groups across Wayve, including other parts of Robot Software, the hardware and supply chain teams, and our field engineering and reliability engineering teams. The team's responsibilities include developing and maintaining our Linux distribution using Yocto, creating and updating Linux kernel drivers for new hardware sensors and peripherals, and hardening our development fleet against all forms of cyber attack.

Key responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership and help build expertise in all aspects of Linux kernel development and the maintenance of Linux distributions
• Own the creation and maintenance of Linux kernel device drivers for the wide array of sensors and peripherals on Wayve's development systems (cameras, RADAR, LiDAR, LTE modems, GNSS receivers, etc)
• Review schematics and provide guidance and advice on component selection to the hardware and supply chain teams
• Work with our security leads to harden our systems against attack, and ensure our Linux kernel and OS are kept up to date and free from known vulnerabilities
• Collaborate closely with the Engineering Manager to translate product and company goals into an actionable and technically sound roadmap.
• Set and uphold high standards for code quality, testing, and system reliability, and proactively invest in technical debt reduction and platform health.
• Lead by example as a hands-on contributor, guiding the team through complex technical challenges and unblocking development bottlenecks when needed.
• Drive technical collaboration across teams, ensuring interfaces, dependencies, and integration points are well understood and aligned with overall system architecture.
• Mentor and support the growth of engineers on the team, helping to develop technical skills, review designs, and build confidence in ownership.
• Champion engineering velocity and focus, identifying opportunities to streamline development processes or tooling to help the team move fast without sacrificing quality.
• Act as a technical point of contact for cross-functional stakeholders, clearly communicating trade-offs, timelines, and risk areas.

About you  

In order to set you up for success as a Tech Lead at Wayve, we’re looking for the following skills and experience.  

Essential 

• Experience with Linux kernel development, including kernel modules and device trees for ARM platforms
• Experience with creating and maintaining Linux distributions, using tools like Yocto or Buildroot
• Familiarity with various low-level interconnects and hardware I/O, like I2C, SPI, GPIO
• Experience with board bring-up and the creation of board support packages
• Strong technical expertise in the team’s core stack (e.g., C, C++)
• Proven experience leading technical initiatives or projects in a fast-paced software environment
• Deep understanding of system architecture, design patterns, and trade-offs
• Hands-on coding ability and high efficiency landing contributions to technical work
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, especially across engineering, product, and other stakeholders
• Track record of mentoring or technically guiding other engineers
• Ability to make clear, high-leverage technical decisions under ambiguity
• Experience with scalable software systems or infrastructure

Desirable 

• Experience working with real-time systems and edge computing
• Experience with robotics, autonomous systems, or other real-world sensing applications
• Familiarity with middleware frameworks (e.g., DDS, ROS 2, custom telemetry systems)
• Experience in developing automotive software, knowledge of DriveOS

This is a full-time role based in our office in London.  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. 

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 

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.