Staff ML Performance Engineer, Performance Architecture

The posting, as Wayve wrote it

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.

🛠️ About our Engineering Teams

The Performance Architecture team is part of Wayve's AI Performance org. We make Wayve's AI workloads faster and more efficient across training and cloud inference, so that performance unlocks new product capability. Our work lets Wayve train larger models faster and run inference more efficiently at scale.

🧠 Your day-to-day

You'll identify, quantify and deliver optimisations across training and cloud inference workloads. You'll profile workloads to find bottlenecks, build optimisations that work across targets rather than one-off fixes, and track the gains with clear benchmarks. You'll work closely with Research and model teams to make performance engineering part of their development cycle, and with platform teams on cloud GPU hardware strategy.

🧩 What you'll be working on

• Profiling ML workloads across training and cloud inference to identify bottlenecks, using system and kernel level profilers
• Designing and implementing efficiency improvements to maximise MFU, throughput and utilisation, e.g. parallelism, compilation, mixed precision, caching
• Building reusable, cross-target optimisations (kernels, data loaders, frameworks such as Triton) rather than one-off, per-workflow fixes
• Designing and implementing benchmarking tools to track efficiency gains and catch regressions on priority training and cloud inference workloads
• Informing cloud GPU hardware strategy and readiness in partnership with platform teams
• Building a culture of performance optimisation with Research and model teams

🙌 You should apply if

• You have 10+ years of industry experience driving performance engineering across ML systems, GPU compute infrastructure, distributed platforms or similar
• You have optimised large-scale workloads on GPU compute clusters, for training, inference or both
• You have written, reported and tracked performance benchmarks in an open and accessible way
• You write high quality, well-structured and tested Python code
• You have a BS or MS in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience

Nice to have

• Experience with concurrent, parallel and distributed computing
• Experience optimising inference serving systems (e.g. latency, throughput, batching, caching)
• Experience using NVIDIA Nsight Systems or other system profilers
• Experience implementing GPU kernels (CUDA, Triton, etc.)
• Knowledge of computing fundamentals - what makes code fast, secure and reliable

🌱 Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we
[…]
📈 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. https://wayve.ai/careers/ To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve https://wayve.ai/careers/

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.