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.
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.
ResponsibilitiesTeam 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.
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.
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.
Skills Required
- Proven experience leading, developing, and motivating mechanical engineering teams in product development
- Experience managing engineers across disciplines, locations, and multiple concurrent programs
- Strong background designing mechanical systems, enclosures, assemblies, and product platforms for high-performance electronic equipment
- Practical experience with structural design, tolerance analysis, materials selection, and manufacturability considerations
- Solid understanding and practical oversight of thermal management technologies, including air-cooled and liquid-cooled solutions
- Experience with sheet metal, machined, cast, moulded, and fabricated assemblies and related manufacturing processes
- Experience delivering products from concept through qualification, production release, and sustaining engineering (NPI and production readiness)
- Familiarity with simulation-driven design approaches: thermal, structural, vibration, and airflow analysis
- Experience driving DFM, DFA, DFR, design reviews, verification planning, and root cause analysis
- Experience collaborating cross-functionally with electronics, software, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, and product management
- Experience managing external partners: contract manufacturers, tooling suppliers, and design partners
- Experience with engineering governance, configuration management, change control, and quality management principles
- Ability to define and manage departmental budgets, KPIs, resource planning, and cost targets
What We Do
The latest generation of AI models achieve breakthrough performance by using vastly more tokens to solve complex problems. As frontier models become more sophisticated, demand is compounding faster than today’s infrastructure can scale. Even the most dominant players, with full-stack control across silicon, software, and supply chains, are unable to solve this within the existing architecture. Inherent constraints in physical design and packaging mean a GPU-based approach is incapable of simultaneously delivering high throughput and high interactivity at low cost. Continuing AI’s advance and making it available to everyone requires a new compute paradigm. One that can overcome the fundamental limits of memory, energy, and speed that define today’s systems. If you like working on difficult and consequential problems, we want you at OLIX. We have offices in London, Austin, Toronto, San Francisco and Bristol. Check out our careers page at olix.com/careers
