Principal Architect

London, United Kingdom
Today
Job Type
Permanent
Work Pattern
Full-time
Work Location
On-site
Seniority
Lead
Education
Degree
Posted
26 May 2026 (Today)

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!

The Role

We're looking for a Principal Architect to define and drive the ‘north star’ architecture of our AI Portal Platform - enterprise grade platform that can scale to multiple OEM customers. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who thrives in early-stage, high-ambiguity environments and has a track record of taking products from MVP to scale. You'll work closely with engineering leads, product managers, and external partners to shape a platform that serves enterprise OEM customers worldwide.

This is a pivotal, high-impact role — we want someone who can bring clarity, structure, and strong technical judgment to a fast-moving, collaborative team.


What You'll Do

  • Define and own the architecture of the AI Portal Platform — a cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS platform — ensuring scalability, resilience, security, and maintainability for enterprise-grade OEM deployments
  • Drive architectural decisions across microservices, multi-tenancy, IAM, workflow orchestration, APIs, and large-scale data transfer pipelines
  • Define scalable architectures for high-volume data ingestion, transfer, storage, and processing to support AI training, validation, and OEM fleet operations
  • Define and enforce platform-wide Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs), including scalability, availability, observability, disaster recovery, operational supportability, performance, and cost efficiency
  • Lead security and compliance architecture aligned with enterprise and automotive standards, including secure-by-design principles, GDPR, ISO 27001, and auditability requirements
  • Own and maintain Architectural Decision Records (ADRs), architecture documentation, system maps, and reference architectures
  • Evaluate build-vs-buy trade-offs and guide technology selection across cloud, platform, and data infrastructure
  • Influence cross-functional technical direction and align stakeholders across engineering, product, infrastructure, and data teams
  • Mentor senior engineers and provide technical leadership to support platform evolution from MVP to a scalable enterprise SaaS ecosystem

What We're Looking For

Essential:

  • Proven experience as a principal engineer or architect on agreenfield SaaS product, ideally taken from MVP to production scale
  • Strong background inmulti-tenant microservices architecture
  • Hands-on experience withworkflow engines (e.g., Temporal or equivalent)
  • Experience withmake vs. buy decision-making at an architectural level
  • Comfortable working inmixed-mode environments (in-house teams + contractors)
  • Excellent communication and influencing skills — able to align technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Experience working in a fast-paced, early-stage or scale-up environment

Nice to Have:

  • Experience withdata platform architecture (not a core requirement, but a plus)
  • Familiarity with OEM or automotive industry processes (e.g., A-SPICE, TISAX)
  • Experience with AI-powered tooling or integrations (Jira, Slack, Notion, etc.)

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

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.

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.

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Principal AI Developer Technology Engineer

NVIDIA Bristol, United Kingdom

Principal AI Developer Technology Engineer

NVIDIA Reading, United Kingdom

Principal AI Developer Technology Engineer

NVIDIA Germany

Principal AI Developer Technology Engineer

NVIDIA

Principal AI Developer Technology Engineer

NVIDIA

Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Live Sports Insights)

Sky Syon, London, United Kingdom
Hybrid

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Robotics Jobs in the UK: Roles, Skills, Salaries and How to Get Hired (2026 Guide)

Robotics Jobs UK 2026: roles, salaries and skills for engineers and researchers in manufacturing, logistics, autonomous vehicles, defence and healthcare. In the UK, most robotics jobs cluster around hubs such as London, Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Manchester and Edinburgh, with common titles including Robotics Engineer, SLAM Engineer, Controls Engineer and Mechatronics Engineer. The most efficient way to browse live robotics jobs is via specialist boards like RoboticsJobs.co.uk, which curate roles specifically in this field so you are not lost in generic tech listings. This guide covers everything you need to know about robotics jobs in the UK in 2026, from the roles and skills in demand to where to find live opportunities and how to stand out as a candidate.

Where to Advertise Robotics Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Where to advertise robotics jobs UK in 2026: the specialist boards, university channels and community routes that reach robotics, SLAM and controls talent. The candidate pool spans mechanical engineers, software developers, controls specialists, computer vision researchers and systems integrators — a multidisciplinary mix that general job boards are poorly equipped to reach. The strongest robotics candidates are often embedded in research groups, defence programmes or advanced manufacturing environments, and move between roles through specialist networks and industry events rather than mainstream platforms. This guide, published by RoboticsJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise robotics roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

Robotics Jobs UK 2026: What to Expect Over the Next 3 Years

Robotics Jobs UK 2026: roles, salaries and the automation hiring trends shaping UK robotics careers over the next three years — industrial, service and humanoid. Robotics is having a moment that feels qualitatively different from the cycles of hype and disappointment that have characterised the sector in previous decades. The convergence of advances in AI, computer vision, battery technology, and hardware manufacturing has brought robotics to an inflection point — one where the gap between what robots can do in controlled laboratory conditions and what they can do in the unpredictable complexity of the real world is closing faster than at any previous point in the discipline's history. For job seekers, this inflection point is creating a jobs market that is expanding rapidly across a far wider range of industries and role types than robotics has historically occupied. Automotive and manufacturing remain significant employers, but they are now joined by logistics and warehousing, healthcare, agriculture, construction, defence, and the emerging category of humanoid robotics — each generating distinct hiring demand and drawing on overlapping but meaningfully different skill sets. The candidates who will thrive over the next three years are those who understand where the sector is heading — which application areas are scaling from pilot to production, which technologies are defining the architecture of modern robotic systems, and how the definition of a robotics career is evolving beyond the mechanical engineering core toward a much richer intersection of software, AI, and systems engineering. This article breaks down what the UK robotics jobs market is likely to look like through to 2028 — covering the titles emerging right now, the technologies driving employer demand, the skills that will matter most, and how to position your career at the leading edge of one of the most exciting technology transitions of the coming decade.