Technical Program Manager, Evaluation & Validation
Wayve · Sunnyvale, California
Before the detail, here's the challenge you'd help us solve.
We build the embodied intelligence that moves real vehicles safely, and the ecosystem a billion machines will run on in the future. Very few people in AI can say this. Every role here, whatever the team, plugs into that.
Here’s what this particular role covers.
THE ROLE
As a Technical Program Manager in Simulation, Evaluation & Validation at Wayve, you'll drive delivery across the platforms and processes that prove the AI Driver is ready for the road - open and closed-loop simulation, the evaluation platform, synthetic data, critical-event pipelines, and behaviour validation. Your programs gate real on-road releases, so your impact is measured in release confidence, signal quality, and developer velocity.
Working with engineers and scientists across Autonomy, Science, Release, Product, and Safety, you'll bring structure to a complex, cross-cutting, safety-critical space in a fast-moving environment. A successful TPM is a force multiplier - helping teams move faster, more effectively, and with purpose.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Drive program delivery: Own end-to-end delivery of cross-team programs spanning simulation, evaluation, and validation.
- Sequence cross-cutting initiatives: Compose roadmaps across simulators, datasets, evaluation, and triage; manage dependencies, risks, and trade-offs, and escalate early with clear options.
- Tie work to outcomes: Connect platform delivery to measurable outcomes - developer velocity, signal quality, cost per evaluation, time-to-insight, and validation credibility.
- Coordinate release-gating validation: Partner with Autonomy, Science, Release, Product, and Safety on acceptance criteria and the validation that gates releases.
- Run delivery rhythms: Run planning, reviews, and retros, and communicate progress and risk to engineers, partners, and senior leaders.
- Champion continuous improvement: Improve tooling, processes, and ways of working across the platforms.
ABOUT YOU
In order to set you up for success as a Technical Program Manager in Evaluation & Validation at Wayve, we're looking for the following skills and experience. (The first three are our must-haves.)
Essential
- Bias for action: 8+ years leading complex, multi-team programs (or a strong record at this level). You lead high-complexity work across teams and get things done.
- Technically strong: Credible with engineers and scientists across simulation, evaluation, ML, and validation; you reason about how data, simulator fidelity, and metric design propagate into release confidence, even though you won't write production code.
- Stays neutral and adapts under pressure: Effective in ambiguous, safety-critical environments; you flex your style and bring structure without slowing delivery.
- Strong project management: Skilled at planning, prioritising, and managing risk and dependencies across teams.
- Clear communicator & collaborator: You influence without authority across Autonomy, Science, Release, Product, and Safety.
- Data-driven: Comfortable defining and using metrics - signal quality, coverage, time-to-insight - to steer delivery and decisions.
- Growth mindset: Open to feedback and always looking to improve.
- Systems thinking: You reason about how the parts of a complex system fit together, and how a change in one area ripples into others.
- Product-minded: You focus on outcomes and the people your programs serve - prioritizing by impact and defining what good looks like, not just tracking activity.
Desirable
- Experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or another safety-critical AI/ML program.
- Familiarity with simulation, synthetic data, evaluation harnesses, or ML observability tooling at production scale.
- Working knowledge of SOTIF (ISO 21448), ISO 26262, or other safety standards relevant to validating learned systems.
- An engineering or computer science degree, or experience working as an engineer; excels in Jira (or similar).
This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $214,900 to $274,000, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience.
A quick, honest note before you apply.
Wayve is not a mature, fully-structured place with the playbook already written. Much of how we work is still being written, and if you join, you’ll help write it. That suits people who want real ownership more than people who need a settled structure from day one.
If that sounds like the kind of problem you want to spend your time on, we’d really like to hear from you.