Principal Research Scientist – Multimodal Reasoning & Embodied AI

• Join Wayve as a Principal Research Scientist, working hybrid from London. • Set and lead a research agenda across LLMs, VLMs, VLAs and embodied AI within the Language & Reasoning team in Wayve Labs. • Explore how world knowledge, visual understanding, memory and reasoning can improve decisions in the physical world. • Stay hands-on by developing new architectures and learning methods and training large-scale models. • Test whether better reasoning leads to better behaviour in challenging driving scenarios. • Collaborate across London and Sunnyvale, with opportunities to publish fundamental research.

• Bring a strong research track record in deep learning, particularly in LLMs, VLMs, VLAs, multimodal foundation models or embodied AI. • Show deep understanding of modern foundation model architectures, transformers, multimodal representation learning and generative modelling. • Have hands-on experience developing, training, fine-tuning or post-training large-scale models. • Know modern learning methods such as instruction tuning, reinforcement learning, preference optimisation and reward modelling. • Show excellent grasp of machine learning fundamentals and the ability to challenge existing approaches with novel ideas. • Use Python, PyTorch and large-scale machine learning experimentation confidently. • Demonstrate the ability to independently lead ambitious research projects from problem identification to validated impact. • Hold a PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Robotics or a related field, or equivalent research experience with a strong publication record.

• Apply to this role even if you do not meet every requirement, as Wayve encourages passionate and curious candidates. • Show experience with reasoning-oriented post-training and learning from human or AI-generated feedback. • Bring experience mentoring researchers and guiding the technical direction of a team. • Show experience in long-horizon planning, memory or agentic architectures for physically grounded agents.

• Research and develop LLMs, VLMs and VLAs that integrate vision, language, reasoning and action for embodied decision-making. • Explore structured and latent reasoning, long-horizon planning, memory, self-reflection and test-time computation. • Develop scalable training and post-training methods, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, reward modelling and distillation. • Build steerable policies that follow instructions, goals and preferences and generalise to novel situations. • Investigate agentic and hierarchical architectures that balance intelligence, reliability and real-time constraints. • Design rigorous experiments, build prototypes and establish challenging evaluations of real-world capabilities. • Work with researchers across foundation models, representation learning, world modelling and reinforcement learning. • Mentor researchers and help define the next generation of embodied AI systems.

Wayve is one of the most exciting AI companies in the UK right now. They are tackling one of the hardest problems in technology, teaching machines to drive, and they are doing it with an approach that the rest of the industry is now converging towards. Backed by SoftBank, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis, Wayve has raised $2.8 billion in total funding and reached a valuation of $8.6 billion. With over 1,000 employees across London, Silicon Valley, Vancouver, Leonberg, Herzliya, and Tokyo, Wayve is scaling fast while keeping its London HQ at the centre. What stands out on Glassdoor (4.4/5 from 112+ reviews) is how consistently employees praise the culture, the calibre of colleagues, and the quality of the technical work. People describe it as some of the most interesting work of their careers. Wayve also offers an on-site chef, private healthcare, competitive pay with equity, and a genuine learning environment where you work alongside world-class ML researchers and engineers. That said, some reviews flag that the pace can be intense and that working across global time zones can stretch working hours. If you are an engineer, researcher, or operator who wants to work on genuinely frontier technology with real-world impact, and you thrive in fast-paced, mission-driven environments, Wayve is a rare opportunity.

• Earn $407,330–$460,020 per year, plus meaningful equity. • Work in a hybrid model that combines in-person collaboration at the London office with focused remote time. • Receive salaries benchmarked against the market annually. • Get relocation support and visa sponsorship where applicable. • Use learning and development budgets for training, conferences and growth. • Access health insurance, dental, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and pension where applicable. • Make use of therapists, wellbeing partnerships and team socials. • Work hands-on in vehicle workshops and labs.

Wayve is building an AI platform for autonomous driving, using an end-to-end approach that lets vehicles learn directly from real-world experience. Its mapless, hardware-agnostic platform integrates with global OEM partners and supports automation from L2+ through to L4. Wayve has hubs in London, Sunnyvale, Yokohama, Herzliya, Vancouver and Leonberg.