Where you will have an impact
Science is the team that is advancing our end-to-end autonomous driving research. The team’s mission is to accelerate our journey to AV2.0 and ensure the future success of Wayve by incubating and investing in new ideas that have the potential to become game-changing technological advances for the company.
As the first Research Manager in our Vancouver office, you will be responsible for managing & scaling a solid Science team in collaboration with other Wayve science teams in London and Mountain View. You will provide coaching and guidance to each of the researchers and engineers within your team and work with leaders across the company to ensure sustainable career growth for your team during a period of growth in the company. You will participate in our project-based operating model where your focus will be unlocking the potential of your team and its technical leaders to drive industry-leading impact. As part of your work, you will help identify the right projects to invest in, ensure the right allocation of resources to those projects, keep the team in good health, provide technical feedback to your team, share progress to build momentum, and build alignment and strong collaboration across the wider Science organisation. We are actively hiring and aim to substantially grow our research team over the next two years and you will be at the heart of this.
Challenges you will own
Work closely with team members to develop career plans and growth trajectories based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses and their own aspirations.
Work closely with project leads to ensure team members are having strong impact and are set up for success.
Work closely with project leads and Science leadership to ensure projects are resourced in a way that balances the needs of the business with the needs of the individuals.
Offer coaching and technical mentorship to direct reports (especially project leads).
Bring technical & project management expertise and experience to help accelerate our progress and decision-making.




Challenge the status quo (both technical and organisational/process).
Prioritize effectively and keep processes lean and effective.
Partner with leadership to maintain a culture of cross-boundary collaboration, impact, innovation, and health.
Grow the team as a hiring manager, to bring in complementary, diverse skill sets and backgrounds. Anticipate the needs of the business 6-24 months out, identify areas where additional resources are needed or we need to grow new domain expertise, and pitch this to leadership for investment.
Contribute to the day-to-day running of the Science team’s operations and larger collaborative efforts.
Day-to-Day
1:1s across the team reporting updates or coaching through career hurdles
Ensure project leads within your team are aligning projects with company goals and priorities
Encourage bold ambition and risk-taking in projects
Work cross-functionally with company leaders to set the broader strategy and roadmap
Sit down with researchers and engineers to review upcoming decisions and assess any dependencies or risks
Organise reading groups and other scientific learning activities
Debug teams and projects - ask the right questions, challenge assumptions, think creatively, eliminate possible factors that could be contributing to a bug, add feedback loops, and then assess feedback
Work with leadership to communicate progress, blockers, and potential accelerants
Assess general team health and look for opportunities to improve processes and best practices
Ensure strong research engineering practice across the team that balances scientific agility with strong engineering




Contribute to outreach efforts at the office, conferences, etc.
What you will bring to Wayve
Essential:
Prior experience as a manager of research teams (10-15+ people) with a clear career interest towards management
Passionate about fostering personal and skilled growth in individual team members
Experience with roadmap planning, stakeholder management, requirements gathering and alignment with peers towards milestones and deliverables
Strong knowledge of Machine Learning and related areas, such as Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, etc.
Industry experience with machine learning technology development which has had real-world product impact
Experience driving a team and technical project through the full lifecycle, ideally within the language, vision or multimodal space
Passionate about bringing research concepts through to product
Research and engineering fundamentals
MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or similar experience
Desirable:
Experience managing the execution of a technical product
Good experience working in a project-based (“matrix”) operating setting
Proven track record of successfully delivering research projects and publications
Experience working with robotics, self-driving, AR/VR, or LLMs
This is our ideal candidate, but by no means the only candidate; we all have different strengths. If you don’t match 100% but believe you could do the job well, we would love to hear from you.
What we offer you
Competitive compensation, learning & development, daily lunches, lots of fun socials, comprehensive private health insurance and more!
Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs.
A position to shape the future of embodied AI, and thus bring about a real-world deployment of a breakthrough technology.
Help relocating to Vancouver, with visa sponsorship.
Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.

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📌 Research Manager (British Columbia)
🏢 Wayve
📍 British Columbia