Technical Program Manager, Data Operations

The role

As a Technical Program Manager in Data Operations at Wayve, you'll be the delivery engine behind our data and annotation operations - turning a high-variance pipeline of requests into predictable, high-quality delivery. You'll own requests end-to-end - intake, definition, estimation, scheduling, execution, and QA - working across data science, ML, engineering, and our external annotation suppliers.

This is high-judgment coordination, not ticket administration: your impact is measured by how reliably data work lands and how effectively you create clarity and unblock progress across many stakeholders. A successful TPM is a force multiplier - helping teams move faster, more effectively, and with purpose.

Key Responsibilities

• Intake & stakeholder alignment: Understand each ask, confirm it's complete, align on the goal and success criteria, and identify missing inputs before work starts.
• Estimation: Coordinate estimation with engineering and data science / ML, facilitate trade-offs, and push back on unrealistic asks.
• Scheduling & setup: Structure and sequence tickets, and coordinate external suppliers to set annotation work up for success.
• Execution, comms & issue management: Keep work moving with clear status updates, risk and issue tracking, blocker removal, a visible "path to green," and well-aligned escalations across internal teams and partners.
• Enable self-serve users: onboard, support, and troubleshoot Wayve's internal self-serve users across the whole annotation tool chain.
• Supplier coordination: Own day-to-day coordination with external annotation suppliers - onboarding, label guides, task launch, QA, and delivery tracking.
• Enable self-serve users: Onboard, support, and troubleshoot Wayve's internal self-serve users across the whole annotation tool chain.
• Continuous improvement: Improve intake, ticketing, and reporting (including automation) - while owning the judgment, negotiation, and unblocking that can't be automated.

About you

In order to set you up for success as a Technical Program Manager in Data Operations at Wayve, we're looking for the following skills and experience.

Essential

• Bias for action: ~3+ years in program, delivery, or operations coordination (TPM, project / program coordinator, or similar). You get things done and deliver reliably within a defined scope.
• Strong stakeholder management and comfort with ambiguity: you create clarity from underspecified asks and stay neutral and constructive when priorities compete.
• Technically fluent enough to coordinate: comfortable working with engineers and data science / ML and reasoning about data and pipelines, even though you won't write production code.
• Brings structure without slowing things down: proactive risk and issue management; escalates early with clear options.
• Clear, frequent communicator: you keep many parties aligned with timely, tailored updates.
• Collaborative: you influence without authority and build trust across teams and suppliers.
• Growth mindset: open to feedback and always improving how the work gets done.
• Systems thinking: You reason about how the parts of a complex system fit together, and how a change in one area ripples into others.
• Product-minded: You focus on outcomes and the people your programs serve - prioritising by impact and defining what good looks like, not just tracking activity.

Desirable

• Experience in data operations, annotation / labelling workflows, or external vendor / supplier management.
• Comfortable with Jira (or similar) and with workflow automation.
• Exposure to ML / data pipelines, autonomy, or robotics.

This is a full-time role based in our office in London or Leonberg. 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, with time spent working from home.