Customer Program Manager

🧠 Your day-to-day

As Robotaxi Customer Program Manager, you’ll be the main customer-facing program lead for Wayve’s Japan-based OEM and partner activity, with a current focus on robotaxi work involving Nissan. You’ll work with the customer to define and manage project plans, and make sure their requirements flow into our internal development pipeline and are delivered on schedule. You’ll turn customer needs and feedback into clear internal priorities, filter and structure requests so the wider organisation can focus on what matters most, and report progress and risks in both Japanese and English. It’s a high-visibility, high-ownership role in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment with significant autonomy.

🧩 What you’ll be working on

• Leading cross-functional teams in executing complex customer programs, making sure program objectives are achieved.

• Establishing and maintaining a comprehensive project management framework, including project planning, risk management, change management and task coordination.

• Engaging with customers to understand and address their technical requirements and needs.

• Collaborating with Product, TPM, R&D and engineering teams to translate customer demands into clear, actionable technical requirements.

• Working with internal development teams to align customer requirements with internal milestone planning and execution.

• Running progress reporting, stakeholder communication and meeting cadence, externally with customers and internally, in both Japanese and English.

• Filtering and structuring customer requests so the wider organisation can focus on what is most important and executable.

• Providing first-level support to customers, so their needs are met promptly and effectively.
  

Essential

• Fluent Japanese and English, with the ability to lead high-stakes external discussions in both languages.

• Strong program management experience, ideally more than 5 years or at senior individual contributor level, in complex automotive software development.

• Direct experience working with Japanese OEMs, automotive companies or tier-1 suppliers.

• Proven customer-facing stakeholder management experience, not just internal program delivery.

• Strong ownership and the ability to operate effectively in ambiguity.

• Robust technical expertise, with comprehensive knowledge of the automotive industry and software development, and some robotics, autonomy or AI-related experience.

• Proficiency with program management tools (e.g. Jira), and exceptional communication and interpersonal skills.

• The ability to collaborate effectively across multidisciplinary teams, and a willingness to travel as needed.

Desirable

• Knowledge of current AI advancements, including Generative AI, AV 2.0 and Large Language Models (LLMs).

• Hands-on software development experience (Python, C++, Rust and others).

• A Master’s degree in Engineering or Computer Science.

🌱 Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! If you’re passionate about autonomy and keen to learn, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.