Senior Manager, Driverless Operating Model

Waabi, founded by AI visionary Raquel Urtasun, is the leader in Physical AI. With a world-class team, we're unlocking the next era of autonomous transportation with technology that's powering commercial autonomous trucks and robotaxis. Waabi is backed by and partners with world leaders in AI, automotive, logistics, and deep tech.   With offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Dallas, and Pittsburgh, Waabi is growing quickly and looking for diverse, innovative and collaborative candidates who want to impact the world in a positive way. To learn more visit: www.waabi.ai Waabi’s Commercial Product team defines and delivers the end-to-end commercial product that makes autonomous trucking deployable, scalable, and valuable to customers. We sit between autonomy, operations, sales, and customers, turning driverless capability into a real-world product that can be launched, sold, operated, and scaled. We are hiring a commercially minded, operationally pragmatic Senior Manager to define how driverless trucking works as a scalable commercial service. You will own the design and evolution of Waabi’s driverless operating model across the full Life of a Load, with a particular focus on our Driver-as-a-Service model, where customers own and operate their trucks while Waabi provides the autonomous Driver and supporting services. This is a role for someone who enjoys broad ownership, navigating complex operational challenges, and getting into the details of how things actually work. You’ll help answer some of the most important questions in commercializing driverless trucking: How should the service work? What should Waabi own versus the customer? What happens when things don’t go according to plan? And how do we build a model that delivers a reliable customer experience while scaling economically? A central part of the role is Mission Control, Waabi’s 24/7 control room that oversees driverless activity on the road. Mission Control monitors operating conditions, including weather, traffic, and road conditions, and provides remote assistance to Waabi Driver trucks in the field. While Operations owns the day-to-day execution of Mission Control, you will own the commercial product requirements and capabilities that enable it to support safe, reliable, and scalable driverless operations. You will help shape its long-term operating architecture, including the capabilities, capacity, and systems needed as the fleet grows. You will also define the requirements for off-nominal response: how the system, people, and supporting services work together when a load deviates from its planned execution. This includes everything from remote assistance and roadside service to vehicle recovery and first-responder interactions. Your work will help establish the foundation for how driverless trucking operates commercially, not just for our first deployments, but for thousands of trucks operating across a national network. What You’ll Own You’ll own the commercial operating model and help drive the decisions that turn autonomous driving capability into a reliable, scalable transportation service. Life of a Load: Define the end-to-end operating model, from a customer’s load order through delivery. Establish the workflows, handoffs, responsibilities, and supporting services required across Waabi, customers, and ecosystem partners. Determine what Waabi should provide, what customers should own, and how those responsibilities evolve as the service scales. Mission Control: Define the commercial requirements and roadmap for Mission Control, including operational domain monitoring, remote assistance, exception handling, and customer communications. Work with software product, operations, and technical teams to determine which capabilities are needed for initial deployments and how they should evolve to support a growing fleet. Off-Nominal Operations: Define how the service responds when a load deviates from its plan, including vehicle breakdowns, road closures, unexpected operating conditions, and other disruptions. Establish the service requirements, responsibility boundaries, and escalation models, working with Operations, Systems, and Safety to develop executable response protocols. Roadside Services and Recovery: Define the third-party services and capabilities needed to support driverless trucks on the road, including roadside assistance, towing, recovery, and first-responder coordination. Determine appropriate service coverage, response expectations, partner responsibilities, and the tradeoffs between service quality, cost, and scalability. Customer Service Experience: Define what customers see, do, and expect throughout the Life of a Load. Establish service visibility, communication, support, and resolution requirements. Partner with Account Management to define service commitments that are commercially compelling and operationally achievable. Commercial Scalability: Turn early deployment solutions into repeatable, scalable capabilities. Make practical tradeoffs between customer experience, reliability, operational complexity, and cost. Help establish an operating model that can expand across customers, corridors, and fleet sizes without requiring a proportional increase in human support. What Success Looks Like Success means Waabi’s driverless service works as a product: it scales, it holds up commercially, and customers trust it. You will have: Established a clear Life of a Load operating model for Driver-as-a-Service, aligned across Operations, Safety, Autonomy, Engineering, and Account Management, with defined responsibilities, service requirements, costs, and outstanding decisions. Enabled driverless launch readiness by defining the commercial requirements for off-nominal response, roadside services, recovery, and customer support, and working with Operations and Safety to ensure the necessary capabilities and protocols are in place. Built a Mission Control product roadmap that identifies the capabilities required for launch and scale, with clear priorities for Engineering and a path toward improving operational efficiency as the fleet grows. Created a clear and reliable customer service experience, where customers understand what Waabi provides, what they are responsible for, and how issues are communicated and resolved. Established a scalable commercial service model, with visibility into support costs, operational dependencies, and the capabilities needed to improve unit economics as deployments expand. Who Does Well at Waabi There is no single path to this role, and many strong candidates will not come from autonomous trucking. We’re particularly interested in people who have built, launched, or scaled complex services where technology and physical operations come together. Relevant backgrounds include: Commercialization and Business Operations: You’ve helped bring a new technology or service to market, designing the operating model, customer experience, and supporting capabilities needed to make it commercially viable. Transportation and Logistics: You’ve designed or transformed how transportation services operate, with firsthand experience in dispatch, service delivery, exception management, and operational economics. Fleet Technology and Services: You’ve introduced new technologies into complex fleet operations, connecting vehicles, technology providers, customers, and service partners. Autonomous Systems and Robotics: You’ve helped design or commercialize autonomous services, including the human support, remote operations, and exception management required to operate reliably. Whatever your background, you’ve built or materially redesigned an operation rather than only run one. You bring strong commercial judgment, enjoy solving messy real-world problems, and care as much about whether a solution makes economic sense as whether it works. Qualifications 8+ years of experience in commercial product management, business operations, commercialization, or related roles, with meaningful experience in technology-enabled physical-world businesses such as transportation, logistics, fleet services, robotics, industrial operations, or field services. Demonstrated experience designing, launching, or scaling complex operational services that bring together technology, physical assets, people, customers, and external partners. Strong commercial judgment and a practical approach to problem-solving. You understand how to balance customer needs, operational feasibility, cost, and scalability. Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous, cross-functional problems, establish a clear direction, make decisions, and drive solutions through implementation. Ability to work effectively across Product, Engineering, Operations, and commercial teams, influencing decisions without direct authority. Comfortable working at both strategic and tactical levels, from defining a long-term operating model to working through the details of an individual customer workflow or operational exception. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex problems, articulate tradeoffs, and drive alignment. Preferred Qualifications Experience taking a new technology-enabled product or service from initial concept or pilot through commercial launch and scale, ideally in an early-stage or rapidly growing company. Experience designing and scaling customer-facing services, including service-level commitments, support models, operational responsibilities, and exception management. Experience in transportation, logistics, fleet operations, or other businesses involving complex physical operations and distributed assets. Experience developing and managing third-party service ecosystems, including partner selection, contracting, service requirements, and performance management. Experience working with Product and Engineering teams to translate operational needs into technical capabilities and influence product roadmaps. Familiarity with autonomous systems, remote assistance, fleet response, safety-critical operations, or other human-in-the-loop operational environments. The US yearly salary range for this role is: $175,000 - $240,000 USD in addition to competitive perks & benefits. Waabi US Inc.’s yearly salary ranges are determined based on several factors in accordance with the Company’s compensation practices. Note: The Company provides additional compensation for employees in this role, including equity incentive awards and an annual performance bonus. Perks/Benefits: Competitive compensation and equity awards. Health and Wellness benefits encompassing Medical, Dental and Vision coverage (for full-time employees only). Unlimited Vacation. Flexible hours and Work from Home support. Daily drinks, snacks and catered meals (when in office). Regularly scheduled team building activities and social events both on-site, off-site & virtually. As we grow, this list continues to evolve!    Waabi is a technology start-up building technologies to transform the way the world moves. Join our talented team to be a part of the future and to make an impact!   Waabi is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a supportive, inclusive, and accessible workplace for all our employees. We seek applicants of all backgrounds and identities, across race, color, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, age, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military or veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, caregiver status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law. We make workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process please let our recruiting team know.