Principle Roboticist, Robot Foundation Model

As a founding member of Wayve's MEGA team, you will help build foundation models for general-purpose robots that perceive, reason, move and manipulate the physical world. You will work across hardware, software and ML systems to advance embodied AI beyond autonomous driving. The role combines hands-on robotics work with research-to-engineering execution in a fast-moving environment. You’ll shape technical direction and collaborate across research, engineering and product teams to enable scalable, real-world robotics capabilities.

• meaningful equity
• relocation support and visa sponsorship
• hybrid working model
• learning and development budgets
• comprehensive benefits including health insurance and maternity/paternity leave

• Build, integrate, and maintain robot hardware platforms for research and experimentation
• Develop and maintain robot software in C++ and Python, including control, planning, ROS/ROS2-based systems, and deployment infrastructure
• Create infrastructure for policy deployment, data collection, evaluation, and the robotics data flywheel
• Run real-world robot experiments and define data collection pilots that inform model development
• Collaborate with research teams on robot policy development, model evaluation, and data strategy
• Debug and troubleshoot robotic software, hardware, and policy failures
• Build robust deployment, regression, and validation tests for robot systems
• Help shape technical direction across robotics, ML, hardware, and experimentation

• Experience in robot manipulation; working with robot hardware
• Experience leading robotics efforts
• Strong programming experience in C++ and/or Python
• Experience with robot software systems such as control, planning, ROS, or ROS2
• Experience in Machine Learning is welcome, in particular training and deploying learned robot policies
• A track record of high-quality research or engineering work in robotics, embodied AI, or related areas
• Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICRA, CoRL, or IROS are highly valued
• PhD preferred; Master's degree with equivalent experience also welcome
• 5+ years of relevant industry experience

• Clear communication across research, engineering and product teams
• Strong ownership and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-moving environment
• Hands-on problem solving and pragmatic engineering mindset
• C++
• Python
• ROS/ROS2