OLIX · 5 hours ago
Performance Modelling Engineer
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
7+ years expOLIX is a pioneering company focused on building the next generation of optical computing technology. They are seeking a Staff Performance Modelling Engineer to create and own analytical and simulation models that guide the architecture and software evolution of their Optical Tensor Processing Unit (OTPU). This role involves collaboration across engineering teams to develop functional and performance simulators, as well as conducting workload analyses to influence design decisions.
Semiconductors
Responsibilities
Ownership: Define and deliver the technical vision and roadmap for your team that unlocks key strategic technical and business goals that are essential to the success of Olix
Collaboration: Partner closely with all engineering teams to help shape our overall system architecture and delivery while ensuring models reflect reality and reality meets performance goals
Champion Modelling: Educate peers on modelling methodology and champion data-driven design culture
Functional Simulator: Design, build, and maintain a functional simulator of the OPTU subsystem and full pipeline
Performance Simulator: Design and maintain architectural & cycle-accurate models of the OPTU subsystems and pipeline. Identify throughput, latency and utilisation hot-spots; propose architectural, or scheduling fixes
Workload Analysis & Bottleneck Hunting: Instrument benchmarks (LLMs, diffusion, graph workloads) to collect detailed traces
Design-Space Exploration: Run massive parameter sweeps with your functional and to understand tradeoffs and guide the software, hardware, and optical teams
Tooling & Automation: Develop Python/C++ tooling for trace parsing, statistical analysis and visualisation.Integrate models into CI so that every RTL commit gets a performance smoke test
Qualification
Required
7+ years building performance or power models for CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, or accelerators
Proven track record providing technical leadership to a team of 5~10 engineers, resulting in significant business impact
Strong coding ability in C++ and Python; experience with discrete-event or cycle-accurate simulators (e.g., gem5, SystemC, custom in-house)
Strong grasp of computer-architecture fundamentals: memory systems, interconnects, queuing theory, Amdahl/Gustafson analysis
Familiarity with machine-learning workloads and common frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX)
Comfort reading RTL or schematics and discussing micro-architectural trade-offs with hardware designers
Excellent data-visualisation and communication skills: able to turn millions of simulation samples into one decisive slide
Bachelor's in EE, CS, Physics, Applied Maths or related; advanced degree preferred but not required
Preferred
Personal or open-source projects in simulators, ML kernels, or performance analysis are a significant plus
Benefits
Meaningful stock options.
£24k annual Living-Local Bonus if your residence is within 20 minutes of the office.
Comprehensive BUPA medical and dental cover, including Medical History Disregarded (MHD), for complete peace of mind.
25 days of annual leave, plus all UK bank holidays.
Chef-prepared meals: if you need to work late.
Caffeine on Us: We’ve got you covered with a tab at our favourite local coffee shop.
We offer full UK and international visa sponsorship.
Our dedicated relocation partner provides funding and concierge support to get you settled.
Company
OLIX
OLIX is building the infrastructure for Frontier AI. (Formerly operating as Flux)
51-200 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageCompany data provided by crunchbase