Material Program Manager
Wayve is a London-headquartered embodied-AI company developing and licensing mapless, vehicle-agnostic driving software for assisted, automated, and robotaxi applications.
About Wayve
Wayve Technologies Ltd. develops the Wayve AI Driver, an end-to-end, data-trained software platform that runs on onboard vehicle compute and native sensors. It is designed for OEM integration across L1 driver assistance through L4 automated driving, without HD maps.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will manage end-to-end materials execution for autonomous vehicle and hardware programmes in Japan. You will coordinate procurement, suppliers, receiving, secure storage, and outbound shipping while maintaining cost, compliance, inventory visibility, and build readiness.
Requirements
- Experience scaling newly developed products through supplier and partner relationships
- Project or programme management experience
- Experience coordinating materials procurement, receiving, storage, and shipping
- Professional written and verbal proficiency in English and Japanese
- Knowledge of Japanese logistics, import/export regulations, and business etiquette
- Cost analysis and negotiation support capability
- Communication and stakeholder management skills
- Experience working in an Agile environment with aggressive timelines
Responsibilities
- Manage materials programmes for autonomous vehicle and hardware development in Japan
- Drive procurement, receiving, storage, and shipping against programme milestones
- Manage material dependencies and blockers across multidisciplinary teams
- Lead the Clear to Build process with suppliers, manufacturers, workshops, and internal stakeholders
- Track procurement strategy, availability, lead times, and build readiness
- Support supplier negotiations on pricing, availability, and scale readiness
- Onboard and manage Japanese suppliers and partners
- Coordinate material receiving, secure storage, inventory tracking, and access controls
- Coordinate compliant outbound shipments and customs requirements
- Support design-for-manufacturing and design-for-scale decisions
- Communicate risks, trade-offs, and decisions to stakeholders and leadership
Benefits
- Hybrid working policy
- Flexible core working hours