NPI 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.

The role

As the NPI Engineer, you lead the successful rollout of new hardware / software products and relevant features. This role is responsible for bridging product development, engineering, safety, fleet operations to ensure seamless launches that meet performance, quality, and user adoption goals. You will be the lead ensuring our cross functional teams deliver new hardware / software solutions that are production-ready and scalable to accelerate the AI development loop.

Key Responsibilities:

• Drive the relative programs towards an agile hardware/software development cycle to meet the program-level milestones

• Develop and refine a scalable NPI framework tailored to agile hardware/software development cycles.

• Partner closely with product managers and engineering leads to ensure development roadmaps align with release readiness criteria, quality standards, and operational scalability.

• Coordinate launch readiness across Field Engineering, Reliability Engineering, and Fleet Operations to ensure smooth transition of new products.

• Collaborate with Supply Chain to review and implement the supply chain footprint for scalability of the product.

• Oversee release planning milestones including alpha, beta, and phased rollout strategies.

• Implement feedback loops from internal stakeholders and early adopters to rapidly address issues before and after release.

• Lead retrospectives and process improvements post-launch to refine future NPI practices.

About you

Essential:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical discipline.

• 5+ years of experience in hardware/software product development, technical program management, or product operations, with at least 3 years in an NPI.

• Understanding of modern software development practices (e.g., Agile, CI/CD, DevOps).

• Understanding of hardware development practices (BOM, Manufacturing Readiness, SOPs, Process development)

• Team player effective at cross-functional collaboration with teams of varying technical backgrounds

• Strong analytical skills and the ability to evaluate the impact of sensor data on model performance

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to work effectively across teams

Desirable:

• Experience with project management tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Notion) and release engineering

• ADAS or Autonomous Vehicle Experience

This role is a full-time role based in Sunnyvale, CA (hybrid) and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $246,400 to $333,400, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. 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.   We operate core working hours so you can determine the schedule that works best for you and your team.

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.