Lead Technical Program Manager, Quality & Compliance
Wayve · Leonberg, Baden-Wurttemberg · London, England
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.
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.
🛠️ About our Technical Program Management Teams
Our Technical Program Management team helps Wayve deliver complex, cross-functional initiatives with clarity and purpose. As our Lead Technical Program Manager for Quality & Compliance, you’ll build and lead a small, high-impact TPM team that rolls out quality and compliance initiatives across the company — spanning quality (including ASPICE), security, data privacy and operational safety. You’ll help us meet heavyweight requirements through pragmatic, low-overhead processes that raise the bar without slowing teams down.
🧠 YOUR DAY-TO-DAY
- Lead, coach and grow a small TPM team, hiring to fill gaps and raising the bar on program delivery.
- Drive flagship quality and compliance initiatives yourself while supporting your team to deliver across Wayve.
- Partner with engineering, product, safety, security, privacy / legal and operations leaders, influencing without authority at every level.
- Turn complex requirements into simple, practical processes; negotiate must-haves versus nice-to-haves and find creative ways to meet long-standing obligations.
- Manage dependencies, risks and trade-offs, adapting your approach in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
- Use metrics and evidence to steer delivery, communicate progress and represent quality and compliance in company-level reviews.
🧩 WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON:
- Rolling out company-wide quality and compliance initiatives — including ASPICE, security, data privacy and operational safety — from framework to embedded practice.
- Building a scalable TPM function that combines strong people leadership with hands-on delivery.
- Establishing governance, KPIs, dashboards, audit readiness, escalations and operational reviews that create clarity without unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Designing lightweight processes that work across teams and make compliance part of how Wayve operates.
- Connecting quality and compliance investment to measurable outcomes: audit readiness, risk reduction and organisational efficiency.
🙌 YOU SHOULD APPLY IF:
- You bring 8+ years of hands-on experience delivering quality, compliance or process programs as a technical program manager, alongside people and process leadership. You’ve built or scaled a program function and have a strong bias for action.
- You’ve directly managed, coached and grown high-performing teams, including responsibility for performance management.
- You’re pragmatic and creative: you can distinguish must-haves from nice-to-haves and find simpler ways to meet complex requirements.
- You’re an exceptional communicator and influencer who brings people along across functions and levels, even without formal authority.
- You’re skilled at designing simple, low-overhead processes and thinking through how changes affect the wider organisation.
- You stay neutral and adapt under pressure, bringing structure to ambiguity without slowing delivery.
- You’re product-minded and data-informed, prioritising by impact and linking programs to business outcomes rather than activity alone.
- You’re open to feedback and continually looking for ways to improve.
Experience with automotive, safety-critical, security or privacy standards — such as ASPICE, ISO 26262, SOTIF (ISO 21448), ISO 27001 or GDPR — would be helpful, but isn’t essential. A background in autonomous vehicles, robotics or another regulated domain, and an engineering or computer science degree or experience working as an engineer, would also be valuable.
🌱 Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.
MORE ABOUT WAYVE:
🚀 Wayve is building the leading AI platform for autonomous driving. We are pioneering an end to end AI approach that enables vehicles to learn directly from real world experience, developing the ability to adapt, generalise and improve at scale. Instead of relying on hand coded rules or pre mapped environments, our AI Driver learns to drive by understanding the world around it. The result is technology that navigates complex urban environments with intelligence, precision and natural flow, unlocking meaningful advances in both safety and efficiency. We believe autonomy represents a once in a generation transformation in how people and goods move, comparable to the shift from horses to cars, and from human driven vehicles to intelligent machines.
Our ambition is to make autonomy universal. Wayve’s mapless and hardware agnostic AI platform integrates with global OEM partners, enabling continuous software evolution and unlocking advanced levels of automation from L2 plus through to L4 as our core AI model scales. In a race increasingly defined by intelligence and real world learning, Wayve is taking a distinct approach, building a generalisable driving intelligence that can power any vehicle, anywhere. By combining embodied AI with scalable deployment, we are creating technology that can be shaped to each OEM brand and driver experience, accelerating the transition to a safer, more intelligent future of mobility.
HOW WE WORK 💻- LOCATIONS & FLEXIBLE WORKING:
Our main hubs are in London, Sunnyvale, Yokohama, Herzliya, Vancouver and Leonberg. We operate a hybrid working model that combines in-person collaboration in our dedicated office spaces with focused time working remotely. This gives our teams the connection and energy of working together, alongside the flexibility to do their best work in a way that fits their lives.
🔍 THE INTERVIEW PROCESS:
Our process is clear and respectful of your time:
- Initial Recruiter Screen (30 mins)
- TPM Screen (45 mins)
- Technical & Partnership (60 mins)
- Program Design (60 mins)
- Leadership & Management (45 mins)
- Final (30 mins)
We’ll always explain the format and work around your availability.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU (LOCATION DEPENDANT):
💰 Salaries benchmarked against the market annually
📈 Meaningful equity, sharing in the ownership and long term success of Wayve
✈️ Relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable
✅ Hybrid working, core hours and the chance to work hands on in vehicle workshops and labs
📚 Learning and development budgets with support for training, conferences and growth
🩺 Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension where applicable, access to therapists, wellbeing partnerships, team socials and more
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.
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.
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.
For more information visit Careers at Wayve. https://wayve.ai/careers/ To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve https://wayve.ai/careers/
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.