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People Partner - Japan
Wayve
People & HR
Japan
Posted on Jul 8, 2025
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.
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!
Who we are
Established in 2017, Wayve is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, driven by breakthroughs in Embodied AI. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic technologies empower vehicles to navigate complex environments effortlessly.
Supported by prominent investors, Wayve is advancing the transition from assisted to fully automated driving, making transportation safer, more efficient, and universally accessible. Join our world-class, multinational team of engineers and researchers as we push the boundaries of frontier AI and autonomous driving, creating impactful technologies and products on a global scale.
The role
We are hiring a People Partner to support the growth and expansion of our community in Yokohama, Japan. This person will be a culture holder for the Yokohama facility and handle a broad set of responsibilities across the full employee lifecycle, through a best practice, employee experience lens.
You will be part of a global People & Talent team and report to the People Partnering Lead, based in London. You’ll work broadly across the function, and closely with Functional People Partners to deliver the people strategy for Wayve. Leading on local employee engagement and relations, policy & process, development and performance, you will monitor the pulse of our Yokohama facility and deliver on what our people need to succeed.
Wayve is in high growth mode and we work in a highly collaborative model with an agile mindset. This role has touch points and dependencies with a number of team members. If you are someone who is confident applying themselves to a wide range of different situations with a positive and resourceful mindset, while demonstrating outstanding collaboration skills, this is an opportunity for you to influence and shape the people offering for our fastest growing office. If you are someone who relies on clear direction that rarely changes and a traditionally hierarchical structure, Wayve is not the right place for you!
Key responsibilities:
- Policy Implementation: Lead on the development and implementation of people policies and procedures specific to the US facility, and support and input on the creation of global people policies. Ensure compliance with local labor laws.
- Employee relations and compliance: Managing all local employee relations cases, supporting individuals and managers through key processes such as disciplinaries, role adjustments, performance processes and more.
- Onboarding: Be the owner of in person onboarding for all new Wayve employees in Japan, ensuring a seamless and best in class new joiner experience.
- Manager Support: support & coach Japan based managers, advising on and resolving any workplace issues and labor relations issues
- Performance Management: Support the implementation of performance management systems in Japan, including performance reviews, calibrations, feedback sessions, and development plans. Assist managers in maximising the potential of their people and addressing performance issues.
- Diversity & Inclusion: in collaboration with the global team, create and implement initiatives to increase diversity at Wayve and support under represented groups
- Culture & Community: together with the local Japan team, uphold the company values and find points of community & connection for our growing Japan team.
- Benefits administration: support the global people operations team in implementing and managing benefits platforms and processes for Japan employees.
- Payroll support: supporting global payroll processes to ensure accuracy and timeliness with payroll, including ensuring overtime is tracked and issued correctly.
About you
In order to set you up for success as a People at Wayve, we’re looking for someone who is excited about the prospect of taking things from 0-1 and building people processes from the ground up, with the following skills and experience.
Essential
- Experience and knowledge of local and country wide employment regulations, with experience managing key regulatory processes (such as filing work rules).
- Fluent/Native Japanese language capabilities.
- Business/Fluent English language capabilities
- Experience in developing, implementing and managing employee policies.
- An appetite for change and a fast paced environment.
- A widespread experience in supporting managers through employee relations cases.
- Experience with system / payroll / benefits administration.
- An ability to be a visible first point of contact for employees.
Desirable
- Experience in an autonomous (standalone) role at an international organisation
- Experience with running onboarding processes
- Experience coaching managers and leaders supporting their development
- Internal communications experience
What we offer you
- The chance to be part of a truly mission driven organisation and an opportunity to shape the future of autonomous driving. Unlike our competitors, Wayve is still relatively small and nimble, giving you the chance to make a huge impact
- Competitive compensation and benefits
- A dynamic and fast-paced work environment in which you will grow every day - learning on the job, from the brightest minds in our space, and with support for more formal learning opportunities too
- A culture that is ego-free, respectful and welcoming (of you and your dog) - we even eat lunch together every day
- Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, cycle scheme, therapy, yoga, two onsite bars, large social budgets
- This is a full-time role based in our office in Yokohama, Japan. 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. We also operate core working hours so you can be where you need to be for family and loved ones too. Teams determine the routines that work best for them.
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 gender, gender identity, gender expression, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, ethnicity, age or religious belief
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.
#LI-FH1
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.
For more information visit Careers at Wayve.
To learn more about what drives us, visit Values at Wayve
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.