Safety system engineer

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.

Safety System Engineer

🛠️ About our Engineering Teams

At Wayve, we are developing AV2.0: an end-to-end AI driving system designed to learn and adapt across a wide range of driving environments, with the ambition to scale autonomy globally. Our Safety team tackles one of the most important and complex challenges in that mission - assuring the safety of our Automated Driving System (ADS) as it evolves across vehicle platforms, applications and operating environments. You will help design and orchestrate the safety assurance framework that makes this possible.

🧠 Your day-to-day

You will lead functional safety activities for Wayve's ADS and its integration into current and future vehicle platforms, as well as third-party safety-critical systems. Working closely with internal engineering teams, external partners and other safety experts, you will build a deep understanding of the system, assess risk, shape the safety concept and architecture, define verification and validation, and develop the evidence needed to support a robust safety case.

🧩 What you’ll be working on:

• Build and maintain Item Definition work products for each vehicle platform and safety-critical integration.
• Conduct HARAs, FMEAs and FTAs to identify risk and define safety concepts that reduce risk to an acceptable level.
• Work with design teams on system architectures that satisfy the safety concept, including decomposition decisions and derived software and external requirements.
• Support software teams in implementing safety requirements on target hardware.
• Define test specifications across integration levels, including vehicle-level verification and validation of the safety concept.
• Build structured safety cases using clear claims, arguments and evidence.
• Contribute to production safety work products and evolve safety processes with process and compliance teams for certification activities.

🙌 You should apply if:

• You have at least 5 years of hands-on automotive functional safety experience applying ISO 26262 across different systems, with strong working knowledge of Parts 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9.
• You have conducted vehicle-level testing at proving grounds to verify and validate safety concepts.
• You are experienced in risk analysis and safety engineering techniques such as HARA, FMEA and FTA, and can translate findings into practical safety concepts, architectures and requirements.
• You can work effectively across software, hardware, systems and external partners, and are comfortable debating safety-related trade-offs at different levels of the organisation.
• You are pragmatic in balancing risk and benefit, especially in a fast-moving development environment, while maintaining high safety standards.
• You are a self-starter who can move between long-term, high-level safety thinking and detailed subsystem or application-level problem solving, and you are confident challenging ideas while remaining open to constructive feedback.

✨ Nice to have

• Practical experience with ISO 26262 Part 6, including production software development and software-tool qualification.
• Experience managing suppliers of safety-related hardware or software, including DIA definition, supplier audits and assessments.
• Experience developing safety cases for automated driving systems, including computer-vision-based systems, and enough knowledge of neural networks to discuss safety assurance approaches with scientists and engineers.
• Experience with SOTIF, including identifying triggering conditions and defining testing and validation strategies.
• Operational safety experience, including identifying operational risks and defining training or procedures for safe public-road testing.

🌱 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 call / recruiter screen (30 mins)
• Hiring manager and competency interview focused on your functional safety experience and approach
• Deep-dive technical interviews covering functional safety, system safety and domain-specific problem solving
• Final interview: mission & values alignment

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.

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. 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.