Principal Product Validation Manager

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 are looking for a senior hire to own product validation for Wayve's automated driving products, with a scope focused on the strategy, system test instances, and OEM-facing validation evidence. The role defines how product requirements are validated across reusable core projects and customer-specific applications. It works backwards from OEM customer releases and turns product goals, functional requirements, system constraints and OEM expectations into comprehensive validation plans and customer-ready artifacts. This is a matrix role not a line-management role, over validation teams. You will work across Product, Systems Engineering, Validation, Safety, Process, Release, Application Engineering, and Program teams to align scope, define specific goals, set priorities, and drive the generation of evidence to support the release and deployment of Wayve’s products. Key Responsibilities Own the product validation strategy for core and application projects, including what can be reused across OEM programs and what must be validated per customer application. Define the system-test process across simulation-based validation, HIL, vehicle tests, and other relevant system-test instances. Translate product goals, functional requirements, customer requirements, and release questions into validation plans, acceptance criteria, and evidence expectations. Provide technical leadership for the execution of the validation activities for specific internal and customer platforms and products. Conduct and participate in regular customer workshops/weekly V&V meetings, including technical presentations and communicating Wayve’s validation approach. Build and maintain OEM-facing validation artifacts, including validation strategy, validation plans, requirements-to-evidence traceability, KPI evaluation, ASPICE-relevant evidence, and release-readiness summaries. Run the product-validation backlog, prioritization, evidence reviews, and release-readiness recommendations for the role's scope. Coordinate execution with validation, systems, safety, process, release, application, and program teams so evidence is produced, reviewed, and available for OEM/customer gates. About You Essential Experience in owning or managing product validation for ADAS, automated driving and parking products. Direct hands-on experience leading and executing Validation & Verification of complex, software-centric automotive projects using SIL, HIL, VIL. Experience with simulation-based V&V Strong understanding of system-level integration, verification and validation across simulation, HIL and vehicle testing. Ability to define KPIs, acceptance criteria, release gates, and evidence packages that support product, safety, technical, and customer decisions. Ensure the success of the validation test by risk management, problem solving and escalation Experience creating OEM-facing validation artifacts, including requirements traceability and ASPICE-relevant validation evidence. Strong automotive product-development background, including requirements, traceability, V-model delivery, release governance, and validation planning. Ability to lead through influence in a matrix organization and create accountability across teams that do not report directly into the role. Clear communication with senior leaders and OEM stakeholders on validation tradeoffs, residual risks, and release confidence. Nice-to-have Experience with L2+ hands-off, L3, or L4 automated driving systems. Formal ASPICE, potential-analysis, safety case, SOTIF, ISO 26262, homologation, NCAP, GSR, or DCAS exposure. Experience with AI/ML-based driving systems, KPI pipelines, telemetry, or data-driven validation loops. Hands on data analytics for validation and verification results and coverage  Knowledge of requirement specifications and management systems - JAMA, JIRA How you will work Key collaborators: Product, Systems Engineering,