Sr. Manager of Autonomy, Japan

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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!  

Senior Manager Of Japan Autonomy

The Role

We're looking for an exceptional technical leader to spearhead our new Japan-based Autonomy team, a self-sufficient and high-impact group focused on localising and advancing our autonomous driving technology for the Japanese market. This is a unique opportunity to shape Wayve’s AV capabilities in Japan from the ground up.

As the founding manager, you’ll lead a small but mighty team of engineers working across robotics, machine learning, and systems integration. You'll drive development of autonomy features tailored for Japan’s road infrastructure, cultural driving behaviours, and regulatory landscape, ensuring our AV stack performs safely and effectively in this highly distinctive environment.

Given the geographical and time zone distance from our London HQ, your team will operate with significant autonomy. We’re looking for someone who thrives in self-directed, startup-like conditions, capable of setting a vision, executing fast, and making robust decisions independently — while staying aligned with global engineering efforts.

This role requires breadth: strong experience across AV systems, including robotics and autonomy, is essential. If you also bring deep expertise in machine learning, that's a major plus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and lead a self-sufficient AV development team in Japan, hiring and mentoring top talent across robotics and ML.
• Deliver autonomy capabilities tailored to Japanese road conditions and driving norms, in close collaboration with central Autonomy teams.
• Act as the primary technical and operational bridge between the Japan office and HQ, aligning roadmaps and communicating local insights.
• Drive full-cycle development: from identifying local autonomy needs, to designing, implementing, testing, and deploying features into production.
• Ensure the team upholds Wayve’s high engineering standards, while operating with agility and independence.
• Work closely with OEM partners in Japan — representing Wayve’s autonomy team in technical discussions, capturing product requirements, and shaping joint development plans.
• Establish close working relationships with our product and vehicle operations teams in Japan.

About You

To be successful in this role, you'll bring strong technical expertise, proven leadership skills, and a passion for building robust autonomous systems that can adapt to diverse real-world challenges.

Essential

• A strong background in robotics and autonomy, with experience building and deploying systems that operate in real-world environments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and grow high-performing engineering teams, ideally in geographically distributed or independent settings.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: you can define goals, carve out roadmaps, and deliver high-impact work with minimal supervision.
• Broad technical fluency: capable of reviewing and guiding work across software engineering, ML, controls, and systems integration.
• Excellent communication skills: you’re able to clearly convey technical context and strategic vision across cultures and time zones.
• Strong product sense and stakeholder management skills: you’re comfortable interfacing directly with OEM customers and representing engineering in external-facing conversations.

Desirable

• Prior experience in autonomous vehicles or robotic systems operating at scale.
• Familiarity with Japan’s road environment, driving behaviour, or AV regulatory landscape.
• A strong foundation in machine learning and its application to real-time decision-making or perception systems.
• Japanese language proficiency (not required, but useful for day-to-day coordination).

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