Senior Performance Modelling Engineer - Optical Computing

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Performance Modelling Engineer to join our innovative team at OLIX. This remote position is ideal for an engineer passionate about optical computing and performance modelling. You will be instrumental in creating and owning analytical and simulation models that guide the architecture and software evolution of our Optical Tensor Processing Unit (OTPU).

What You'll Do

• Own and deliver projects on your team's roadmap that unlock key high-impact technical and business milestones that drive the success of OLIX.
• Collaborate closely with hardware, compiler, and ML framework teams to ensure models accurately reflect reality and meet performance goals.
• Design, build, and maintain a functional simulator of the OPTU subsystem and full pipeline.
• Develop architectural and cycle-accurate models of the OPTU subsystems and pipeline, identifying throughput, latency, and utilization hot-spots.
• Instrument benchmarks (LLMs, diffusion, graph workloads) to collect detailed traces for workload analysis and bottleneck hunting.
• Run massive parameter sweeps to understand trade-offs and guide the software, hardware, and optical teams, packaging results into clear, quantitative analyses and design recommendations.
• Develop Python/C++ tooling for trace parsing, statistical analysis, and visualization, integrating models into CI for performance smoke tests.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building performance or power models for CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, or accelerators.
• Strong coding ability in C++ and Python; experience with discrete-event or cycle-accurate simulators (e.g., gem5, SystemC).
• Solid grasp of computer architecture fundamentals: memory systems, interconnects, queuing theory, Amdahl/Gustafson analysis.
• Familiarity with machine-learning workloads and frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).
• Excellent data visualization and communication skills, capable of distilling complex simulation data into actionable insights.
• Bachelor’s degree in EE, CS, Physics, Applied Maths, or related field; advanced degree preferred.

Nice to Have

• Experience with personal or open-source projects in simulators, ML kernels, or performance analysis.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary, commensurate with experience, skills, and location.
• Equity & Ownership: Meaningful stock options.
• Proximity Bonus: $42k CAD annual Living-Local Bonus for residents within 20 minutes of the office.
• Premium Healthcare: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage.
• Time Off: 25 days of annual leave plus all Ontario bank holidays.
• Relocation support: Comprehensive packages to help you move and settle in your new role.
• Elite Hardware: M4 Macs and ergonomic workstations provided.
• Chef-prepared meals for late work hours.