---
title: 'Mechanical Engineering Manager at OLIX'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineering-manager-olix-london-66hq45m0psd2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Mechanical Engineering Manager at OLIX

- **Company:** OLIX
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Compensation:** £163k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/olix/ddd377ec-0698-4b05-8f6c-2524df47d28f/application

**Skills:** Mechanical Design, Structural Analysis, Thermal Management, Material Selection, Tolerance Analysis, Manufacturability, DFM, DFA, DFR, CAD, Simulation, Root Cause Analysis, New Product Introduction, Configuration Management, Engineering Change Control

> Lead and grow the mechanical engineering organization, overseeing technical leadership, team development, and hands-on engineering oversight across the full product lifecycle. Drive the delivery of complex mechanical systems, enclosures, and thermal solutions while building the culture and processes that enable the...

## Job description

## ABOUT OLIX

AI is growing faster than any technology in history and the explosion in demand has created a massive infrastructure gap; we can no longer build chips or power stations fast enough to keep up. The industry is still leaning on a ten-year-old hardware blueprint that has reached its limit. A new paradigm that is faster and more efficient will be the biggest economic opportunity of the next century and create the most important company of the next decade. The OLIX Decode Accelerator 1 (DX-1) is the first accelerator architected specifically for decode. Rack-scale co-design of logic, data movement, packaging, optics and interconnect enables a step change in system level performance.

## THE ROLE

We are seeking an experienced Mechanical Engineering Manager to lead and grow our mechanical engineering organisation. This is a high-ownership role spanning technical leadership, team development, and hands-on engineering oversight across the full product lifecycle. Driving products from concept and architecture through to production and field support.

You will drive the delivery of complex mechanical systems, enclosures, and thermal solutions while building the culture, capability, and processes that let your team do their best work, collaborating closely across Electronics, Optical, Software, Manufacturing, Quality, and Product Management.

If you care equally about technical excellence, developing people, and delivering breakthrough compute infrastructure, there is a massive amount of impactful work to dig into here.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Team Leadership & Development: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of mechanical engineers and designers — setting objectives, running performance reviews, recruiting talent, and fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, and technical excellence.
- Engineering Delivery: Oversee the design, verification, and validation of mechanical systems, assemblies, and enclosures, ensuring products meet performance, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, and cost targets from concept through qualification and production release.
- Technical Leadership: Provide direction across mechanical design, structural analysis, thermal management, and materials selection; review CAD, drawings, and tolerance analyses; drive DFM/DFA/DFR; and lead resolution of complex mechanical and integration issues.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Electronics, Software, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and Product Management to integrate mechanical, electrical, and thermal subsystems and support NPI through volume production.
- Quality, Compliance & Governance: Own engineering documentation, configuration control, and change management, ensuring designs meet safety, reliability, environmental, and regulatory requirements.
- Planning & Strategy: Manage budgets, resources, and engineering KPIs; define the mechanical engineering roadmap; and align engineering execution with company strategy and product goals.

## SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

- Team Leadership & Management: Proven track record leading, mentoring, and scaling high-performing mechanical engineering teams, aligning technical execution with company goals.
- Technical Foundation: Strong background designing complex mechanical systems, enclosures, and product platforms for high-performance electronic equipment, with deep understanding of structural design, thermal management, materials, tolerancing, and manufacturability.
- Product Development & Delivery: Experience delivering complex products from concept through production and lifecycle support, including design reviews, qualification, NPI, and production ramp within structured, stage-gated processes.
- Thermal & Systems Insight: Solid understanding of air- and liquid-cooled thermal solutions and system-level integration (electronics, airflow, cable routing, assembly constraints), enabling credible technical oversight.
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Strong systems-thinking and stakeholder-management skills, able to lead cross-functional decision-making and communicate clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
- External Partner Management: Experience managing design partners, contract manufacturers, and suppliers — defining requirements, reviewing deliverables, and holding partners to quality, schedule, and cost.
- Commercial & Strategic Judgement: Ability to manage budgets, cost targets, and KPIs, make trade-offs across performance, cost, schedule, and risk, and thrive in a fast-scaling environment.

## COMPENSATION & EQUITY

- Competitive Salary: Commensurate with your experience, skills, and location
- Equity & Ownership: Meaningful stock options. You’re not just joining the mission; you’re owning a piece of it
- Proximity Bonus: We value your time. To minimise your commute and maximise your life, we offer an annual Living-Local Bonus if your residence is within 20 minutes of the office
- Retirement Benefits: Employer-contributed retirement plans to help you build long-term financial security.

## About OLIX

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OLIX, formerly known as Flux, is building a new compute paradigm using an SRAM-architecture integrated with photonics to solve the fundamental memory, energy, and speed constraints in deploying frontier AI.
- **Entity Type**: Private, Series A (raised $220M in February 2026)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: James Dacombe (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Semiconductor Manufacturing, AI Infrastructure, Photonic Computing
- **Target customers**: Enterprise AI labs, hyperscalers, and frontier AI model developers requiring high-throughput, low-latency compute
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Solving the most consequential problem in the deployment of frontier AI" by building infrastructure that overcomes the limits of current GPU-based memory architecture.

## Products & Services
- **OLIX Compute Platform**: A new hardware architecture combining SRAM-based compute with integrated photonics, designed to surpass HBM-based systems on throughput per megawatt and total cost of ownership (TCO), while delivering significantly better interactivity and latency than silicon-only SRAM architectures.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Unicorn status; estimated $1–2.5B (latest round Feb 2026, per Dealroom)
- **Key Metric**: $220M in total funding (Series A, led by Hummingbird Ventures, with participation from Crane Venture Partners and others)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Hummingbird Ventures (Series A lead), Crane Venture Partners (pre-seed lead), and 4+ additional investors across seed and Series A rounds.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 420% YoY to 70 employees; operating in 6 countries (UK, US, Canada, Armenia, Romania, Germany); active job postings surged 188.9% YoY with 26 open roles as of mid-2026.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique photonic-SRAM architecture**: A contrarian bet that GPU-based approaches cannot simultaneously deliver high throughput and high interactivity at low cost due to physical design constraints.
- **Talent density**: Heavy hiring from top compute and AI companies (Apple, Amazon, Arm, Google, Tenstorrent).
- **First-mover in inference-era compute**: Targeting a fundamental bottleneck as frontier models require vastly more tokens per inference.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale teams**: Aggressively hiring across engineering (ASIC/photonic design, FPGA, optics, process integration), operations, and legal in London, Austin, Toronto, Bristol, and San Francisco.
- **Prototype and productize**: Moving from architecture conception into hardware integration and manufacturing (roles include Process Integration Engineer, Opto-Mechanical Engineer, Layout Engineering Manager).
- **Transition from Flux branding**: Rebranded to OLIX in January 2026 to signal a new phase of company identity and scale.

## Why Work Here
- **In-person culture**: OLIX is an in-person company. They incentivize living within a 20-minute commute of the office with a £24,000 annual living-local bonus.
- **Compensation**: Benchmark-leading base salary, meaningful stock options (early employees build significant ownership), and workplace pension.
- **Benefits**: Comprehensive BUPA medical & dental (with Medical History Disregarded), 25 days holiday + UK bank holidays + birthday leave, meals on-site, cycle-to-work scheme, nursery scheme, visa sponsorship and relocation support.
- **Engineering environment**: M4 Mac standard (M5 Pro upgrade for engineering), on-site 3D-printing lab, noise-cancelling headphones, fully ergonomic workstation, and a culture of deep focus.
- **Impact**: "You will work with some of the best minds in photonics, systems, and compute on one of the defining problems of our era."

## Sources
1. [olix.com](https://olix.com/)
2. [olix.com/careers](https://olix.com/careers)
3. [LinkedIn - OLIX](https://www.linkedin.com/company/olix-computing)
4. [Dealroom - OLIX](https://dealroom.co/companies/olix-1/)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/olix](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/olix)

## Other roles at OLIX

- [Laser Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/laser-architect-olix-london-g0yh7pg0qg4e) — London, United Kingdom
- [Financial Controller](https://feeny.ai/job/financial-controller-olix-london-dj3nebzx9q5e) — London, United Kingdom
- [Director of Quality](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-quality-olix-austin-1ky60e0vnf16) — Austin, TX
- [Staff / Senior Software DevOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-senior-software-devops-engineer-olix-toronto-6k46f8e5maks) — Toronto, Canada
- [Infrastructure Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-manager-olix-london-pys2c3cv8qf2) — London, United Kingdom
- [Director of Strategic Sourcing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-strategic-sourcing-olix-austin-aw2h3484k1jh) — Austin, TX
- [Architect/Staff Systems Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/architect-staff-systems-software-engineer-olix-london-dva4eb54dpfd) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior Opto-Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-opto-mechanical-engineer-olix-london-804ny5352m3v) — London, United Kingdom
- [Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-olix-london-39eswe03ks94) — London, United Kingdom
- [Lead CAD & Design Enablement Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-cad-design-enablement-engineer-olix-austin-k6zeqmdtxgxg) — Austin, TX