Staff ML Performance Engineer (Inference Optimisation)
WayveLondon, United Kingdom · Posted 3 months agoDescription
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
As a Staff ML Performance Engineer, you’ll play a key role in high-impact projects, optimising ML inference for edge accelerators and GPUs. The focus of this team is to run large transformer-based models efficiently on low-cost, low-power edge devices to enable Wayve’s first driving product.
You’ll help set the technical direction for turning these models into production systems that run reliably on in-vehicle compute. This is a hands-on role working across ML systems, compilers, runtimes, kernels, and embedded deployment, contributing to several early-stage, high-impact projects at Wayve.
Key responsibilities:
- Profile and pinpoint bottlenecks across the full inference stack (model graph, compiler/runtime, kernel execution, memory movement) and deliver measurable improvements.
- Implement and validate optimisations in compilers, runtimes, and/or kernels (e.g. operator fusion, scheduling, quantisation-aware performance, custom kernels).
- Build robust benchmarking and regression testing to ensure performance improvements hold across models, devices, and software releases.
- Optimise for multiple targets (e.g. NVIDIA Orin/Thor, Qualcomm) and work with teams to support these in a maintainable way
- Collaborate with model developers to influence architecture and training/deployment decisions that affect on-device performance.
- Contribute to technical roadmaps and tooling and help raise the standard of performance engineering across the team
About you
Essential
- Proven experience improving performance in production systems with tight constraints (latency, memory, bandwidth, power/thermal, or cost).
- Strong proficiency with at least one relevant stack/toolchain (e.g. TensorRT, CUDA, Qualcomm QNN, Triton, OpenCL) and confidence learning adjacent frameworks quickly.
- Comfort operating at multiple levels of abstraction — from high-level model behaviour down to low-level kernel/runtime execution.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals (debugging, profiling, testing, and maintainable code).
- Clear communicator and collaborative teammate; able to align multiple stakeholders on performance trade-offs and priorities.
Desirable
- Exposure to embedded or edge deployment of ML models, including benchmarking on real devices and handling system-level constraints.
- Experience with NVIDIA and/or Qualcomm SoCs and performance tooling.
- Python and C++ proficiency.
- Experience mentoring others and/or driving technical direction in a small, fast-moving team.
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.
#LI-HH1
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
For US candidates only, please visit E-Verify Notice and Participation and Right to Work
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.
Similar jobs
Est. 269,500 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 120,000 GBP
We are looking for an engineer with experience in low-level systems programming and optimisation to join our growing ML team. Machine learning is a critical pillar of Jane Street's global business. Our ever-evolving trad…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About the job Validate the ML stack that turns accelerator hardware into trusted AI performance. This role sits where modern ML models meet Graphcore’s software and hardware stack. You will test, benchmark and validate c…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About the job Validate the ML stack that turns accelerator hardware into trusted AI performance. This role sits where modern ML models meet Graphcore’s software and hardware stack. You will test, benchmark and validate c…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About the job Validate the ML stack that turns accelerator hardware into trusted AI performance. This role sits where modern ML models meet Graphcore’s software and hardware stack. You will test, benchmark and validate c…
Est. 231,500 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 120,000 EUR
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 120,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 235,000 USD
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 95,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 212,000 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 95,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 175,000 USD
We are looking for an engineer with experience in low-level systems programming and optimisation to join our growing ML team. Machine learning is a critical pillar of Jane Street's global business. Our ever-evolving trad…
Est. 120,000 EUR
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 80,000 GBP
About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to…
Est. 113,500 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 85,000 GBP
Who We Are Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with…
Est. 212,000 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 178,000 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 212,000 USD
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI…
Est. 202,500 USD
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 256,500 USD
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 120,000 EUR
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…
Est. 306,300 PLN
Salary Range: PLN 260,400 - 352,200 Subject to alignment to the responsibilities and duties of the role About Graphcore At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and A…
Est. 175,000 USD
We are looking for an engineer with experience in low-level systems programming and optimization to join our growing ML team. Machine learning is a critical pillar of Jane Street's global business. Our ever-evolving trad…
Est. 127,500 USD
Who We Are Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with…
Est. 200,000 GBP
Who We Are Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with…
Est. 120,000 EUR
About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to…