Head of Legal, Commercial

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 are hiring our Head of Legal, Commercial to lead and scale the commercial legal function at OLIX. Reporting to the Chief Legal Officer, you will own commercial contracting end to end as OLIX moves from a small legal team to a function that supports a rapidly scaling business. You will be the lead lawyer on some of our most important projects and largest and most complex deals, the person the business comes to to help them make clear and quick risk decisions and, as the company grows, you will have the opportunity to recruit team members. You will define the playbooks, standards, and tooling that let OLIX scale faster than legal headcount.

This is a player-coach role for a technically excellent, experienced lawyer who wants to own a function in an environment accelerating and changing quickly, work hands-on with engineers and commercial leaders, and shape how commercial legal works at one of the most ambitious deep-tech companies in Europe. You will not be sitting above the work. You will be leading the toughest negotiations yourself, making judgement calls where the law, the facts, and the commercial picture are all still moving, and building the team that handles everything else. OLIX moves quickly, priorities shift, and there is often no precedent to lean on. You need to have worked in an environment like this before, or be able to show you would thrive in one.

Open to UK-based candidates and US-qualified attorneys willing to relocate to London. We provide full visa sponsorship and relocation support.

Responsibilities

Lead the commercial legal function end to end: strategy, team, deal flow, tooling, and standards.

Personally lead negotiations on OLIX’s largest and most complex commercial deals, including customer agreements with hyperscalers, manufacturing, and other supply chain agreements with contract manufacturing partners, NREs, JDAs, technology licences, and strategic partnerships.

Build and scale the commercial legal team as OLIX grows. You will be hands-on as the main lawyer on your own projects from day one and, in time, hire, develop, and line-manage additional team members.

Set commercial legal standards, playbooks, fallback positions, and templates across the function.

Working with the CLO, make risk decisions, and help the business make them. Cut through ambiguity, frame legal and commercial risk in plain terms, recommend a position, and own the call, including where the facts, the law, or the commercial context are developing and moving quickly.

Design and build scalable legal workflows using AI tooling and automation, so the legal function scales faster than headcount.

Integrate AI deeply into day-to-day contracting: triage, first-pass review, redline generation, clause extraction, precedent search, and playbook enforcement.

Set OLIX’s positions on key commercial terms including liability caps, indemnities, IP ownership and licensing, data protection, warranties, termination, and service levels.

Own the IP dimension of commercial work: structure and negotiate IP ownership, background and foreground IP, licensing, confidentiality, and know-how provisions in JDAs, NREs, and manufacturing and supply arrangements, working closely with engineering and IP counsel to protect OLIX’s core technology, working closely with the CLO and other senior leaders to define and implement IP strategy.

Partner with Sales, Supply Chain, Procurement, Operations, and Engineering to align legal with business strategy.

Manage external counsel for specialist workstreams including US contracting, specialist IP, data, and export controls.

Partner with the CLO and other team members on cross-functional matters including corporate, governance, and regulatory work that touches commercial contracting.

Contribute to legal tooling selection, CLM implementation, and internal enablement across the broader legal team.

Skills & Experience

Qualified solicitor in England and Wales, or US-qualified attorney (admitted to a US state bar), guidance being at least 8 to 12 years of post-qualification experience.

Trained at a top-tier City, US, or comparable international firm.

Technically excellent lawyer. Rigorous legal analysis, precise drafting, and a structured approach to playbooks and standard forms. You know when precision matters and when speed does, and you are the person more junior lawyers check their work with.

Demonstrable track record leading complex commercial contract negotiations end to end as the responsible lawyer, not just supporting a partner, and of being the main lawyer on multi-workstream projects (a manufacturing ramp, a major customer deployment, a strategic partnership) rather than on a single contract.

Technical IP experience. You have negotiated IP ownership, background and foreground IP, licensing, confidentiality, and know-how provisions in technology development, manufacturing, and supply arrangements (JDAs, NREs, foundry and supply agreements), ideally involving semiconductors, hardware, or other deep technology. You do not need to be a patent attorney, but you need to understand what is being created and licensed and how to protect it.

Comfortable operating in ambiguity and making risk decisions. You can take an incomplete picture, work out what matters, give a clear recommendation, and own it. You help the business make good risk calls rather than handing it a list of issues.

Proper, relevant experience of an environment like OLIX: you have built, scaled, or meaningfully contributed to a commercial legal function in a fast-moving technology or hardware business, ideally a venture-backed scale-up, working directly with founders, engineers, and commercial teams.

Line-management or mentoring experience with junior counsel, paralegals, or secondees. Does not need to be extensive but needs to be real, and you want to manage and grow a team as the function scales.

Comfortable with technical subject matter. You can get to grips with OLIX’s technology well enough to draft and negotiate around it credibly and to hold your own with engineers.

AI-native approach to legal work. You actively use AI tools in your day-to-day practice, have strong instincts for what AI does well and where it fails, and treat AI fluency as a core craft skill rather than a novelty.

Bias toward building scalable systems over doing work manually. You look for the automation, template, or workflow that solves the problem ten times, not just once.

Commercially pragmatic, able to move at pace, and comfortable owning positions without constant supervision.

Direct, plain-language communicator.

The right fit for how OLIX works: hands-on, direct, high ownership, and comfortable being part of the team rather than a gatekeeper. You would rather solve the problem than write the memo.

Nice to have

Experience in technology or in technical manufacturing more broadly, ideally B2B hardware, semiconductors, or infrastructure. Highly desirable.

Supply chain experience: supply, manufacturing, component, and logistics arrangements, and the issues that come with scaling a hardware supply chain (capacity and volume commitments, allocation, lead times, quality, tooling, dual-sourcing). Highly desirable.

Famili