---
title: 'Staff / Senior Software DevOps Engineer at OLIX'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-senior-software-devops-engineer-olix-toronto-6k46f8e5maks'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Staff / Senior Software DevOps Engineer at OLIX

- **Company:** OLIX
- **Location:** Toronto, Canada
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/olix/1918a1c8-a72e-4823-aa93-5cf3f465b06d

## 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're searching for a Staff/Senior Software DevOps Engineer to own the build, test, and CI flows that the entire DX-1 software stack, including the compiler, runtime, simulator, and framework integration, depends on. Ours is a large test suite that asserts token-exact correctness against golden references, and it has to run across scarce, expensive resources that span both simulation compute and hardware-in-the-loop testing, including simulator and emulator boxes alongside DX-1 and prototype-platform boards. Your mission is to keep that system fast, trustworthy, observable, and affordable as the test suite, the team, and the resource pool all grow.

This is a build-and-test role, not product-serving SRE. You'll work where CI, the runner fleet, and the test hardware meet, partnering closely with the infrastructure, compiler, runtime, simulator, and modelling teams. At the Senior/Staff level, your impact is the velocity of every engineer who depends on this system: how fast they get a trustworthy signal, how rarely they wait on a machine or a flaky run, and how much they can self-serve without coming to you. That leverage, through the standards, platforms, and shared resource model others build on, is what we're hiring for far more than any single system you ship.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

Own the Build & Test Pipelines: Design, build, and own CI pipelines and test execution across PR, merge, and nightly lanes that gate the entire software stack, balancing fast feedback with coverage and cost.

Scale Test Execution: Split a large, slow suite into staged lanes, parallelize it with real test isolation, and cache aggressively using content-addressed keys so feedback stays fast and cost-effective as the suite and the team grow, rather than relying on simply adding more machines.

Manage the Fleet & Scarce Resources: Run CI across a heterogeneous fleet of cloud and self-hosted machines, and give the team fair, monitored, fail-fast shared access to scarce and expensive hardware, keeping it reliable, well utilized, and never a silent bottleneck.

Build the Performance & Readiness Signal: Stand up performance regression baselines the team trusts using pinned hardware, rolling baselines, sound metric aggregation, and deterministic testing. Turn CI and test signals into CI health and product readiness dashboards that drive real decisions.

Own Software Observability: Choose the metrics store that scales to many time series across daily runs with long-lived history, making dashboards for observable software.

Set Standards: Define the flows that keep builds and test runs hermetic and reproducible, and make the system fail closed while containing the blast radius when something is misconfigured or a job is untrusted.

## SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

- Experience in build/test infrastructure, CI/CD, developer productivity, or large-scale systems and release engineering, with demonstrated end-to-end ownership of a large test or CI system
- Experience scaling a large test suite through staged lanes, parallelism with real isolation, content-addressed caching, and maintaining fast, cost-effective feedback as the suite grows
- Experience managing heterogeneous CI runner fleets across cloud and on-prem environments, including VMs, containers, and bare-metal hardware. Ability to provide teams with shared, monitored access to scarce or expensive resources such as custom accelerators, FPGA/prototype rigs, lab hardware, or contended compute, including reservations, remote access, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and artifact portability across heterogeneous hosts
- Experience supporting performance analysis with trustworthy regression baselines, deterministic testing, noise handling, sound metric aggregation (geometric mean, arithmetic mean, and median), and fast attribution and bisection
- Experience building observability and metrics platforms, including CI health and product readiness dashboards, metrics stores that scale to long-lived, high-cardinality time series, and self-service access for engineers
- Strong scripting and systems programming skills (for example, Python plus a systems language), along with proficiency in containers, Linux, and cloud infrastructure such as AWS
- A reproducible, safe-by-default mindset, including hermetic builds, least privilege, fail-closed defaults, and blast radius control
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to align and influence cross-functional teams, including compiler, runtime, and modelling teams, without relying on formal authority
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field

## NICE TO HAVE

- GitHub Actions or comparable CI at scale; scaling CI runner fleets on cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS); hardware-in-the-loop or lab automation for custom silicon or FPGA bring-up; time-series and observability stacks (Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog, columnar warehouses)
- Adjacent depth is welcome: HPC / cluster batch scheduling, release engineering, or developer-productivity platforms

## 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

Due to U.S. export control regulations, candidates’ eligibility to work at OLIX depends on their most recent citizenship or permanent residency status. We are generally unable to consider applicants whose most recent citizenship or permanent residence is in certain restricted countries (currently including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Russia, Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Venezuela). Applicants who have subsequently obtained citizenship or permanent residency in another country not subject to these restrictions may still be eligible.

## 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
- [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
- [Senior People Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-people-partner-olix-toronto-rhw1qpw7jpmw) — Toronto, Canada