Director of Digital Design

The Role

Olix is building Optical Tensor Processing Units (OTPUs) — a new class of AI accelerator powered by photonics. We’re looking for a Director of Digital Design to drive the design, implementation and verification of our first digital ASICs, working closely with our mixed-signal and photonics teams.

This is a hands-on, high-impact role for someone who combines deep RTL and SoC design expertise with strong architectural judgment and technical leadership. You’ll be responsible for building and guiding the digital design team, defining the architecture of compute and control subsystems, and ensuring our chips meet performance, power and area targets.

This position reports into the VP of ASIC.

Responsibilities

• Lead the digital design and verification effort for Olix’s ASICs, from architecture through tape-out.

• Define and partition digital subsystems (compute cores, data movement, control, and high-speed interfaces).

• Drive the development of RTL, synthesis, timing closure, and DFT methodologies for next-generation optical compute devices.

• Coordinate closely with analog, mixed-signal, photonics, packaging, and firmware teams to integrate full-stack system functionality.

• Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing digital design team; set technical standards and review critical design work.

• Collaborate with EDA partners, foundries, and external IP vendors to ensure schedule and quality targets are met.

• Establish and manage verification plans, regression infrastructure, and bring-up/test hand-off.

• Own key technical decisions around power domains, clocking architecture, data paths, and testability.

• Contribute directly to strategic program planning, MPW/test-chip execution, and silicon bring-up.

Skills & Experience

• 15 + years experience in digital ASIC design and verification, with at least 3+ full-cycle chips successfully taped out at ≤ 22 nm.

• Demonstrated track record managing managers and multi‑disciplinary teams (high speed analog, digital, verification, physical design, test).

• Proven ability to lead teams through RTL architecture, design, verification, synthesis, and timing closure.

• Deep understanding of high‑speed mixed‑signal design challenges—multi‑lane SerDes, fast‑settling DACs/ADCs, sub‑picosecond clocking, advanced power‑delivery and packaging.

• Proven success negotiating foundry schedules, MPW slots, mask‑set revisions and yield‑improvement plans with Tier‑1 fabs (TSMC, Samsung, GF, UMC, etc.).

• Strong cross-disciplinary communication and program-management instincts — able to drive execution across multiple domains.

• Comfort with startup-pace environments where iteration speed and ownership matter more than bureaucracy and alignment with 5-days in-office culture.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive stock options, you’re not just part of the journey, you will own a piece of it.

• Live within 45 minutes of the office? Perfect. Live within 20 minutes? We’ll add an extra $36k location bonus to your salary.

• We offer financial and operational relocation support (US and abroad), through a dedicated third-party provider who is on hand to make your move as seamless as possible.

• We offer US employees access to a 401(k) retirement savings plan and we plan to introduce an employer match in line with tech market norms (commonly in the 4-5% range). Our goal is to keep our retirement benefits competitive while we scale.

• Top of the line, high-spec tech for everyone.

• Sony noise-cancelling headphones and ergonomic setups to keep you comfortable and focused.

• Personal company card to spend on tools that help you do your job - like ChatGPT Pro or anything else that boosts your workflow.

• Periodic travel to London HQ and regular team socials.

• 33 days of paid time off (PTO), including US federal holidays.

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.

We do not accept unsolicited CVs from recruitment agencies, will not be liable for any fees, and prohibit unauthorised use of our company name in recruitment activities.