About HILOS

HILOS is building the first 3D design platform made specifically for footwear—no CAD required. Powered by machine learning, our core geometry engine breaks down barriers between 2D and 3D, design and manufacturing.

Our cross-functional team sits at the intersection of footwear and software, combining craft and intelligence to give designers a second brain and third hand. We’re here to amplify human impact in real-world creation—and we believe the tools should be just as inspiring as the work they enable.

Role Overview

We're seeking a Lead Platform Engineer to own and evolve our backend platform as we scale our creator tools and computational design capabilities. This is a high-impact role with significant ownership: you'll be the engineering backbone who ensures our platform is reliable, well-architected, and built to grow—while enabling the team to ship features rapidly and safely.

You'll build and maintain the Django backend that powers 3D geometry processing, algorithm execution, and manufacturing workflows—designing clean APIs, managing data models, and keeping our AWS infrastructure healthy. This is a hands-on role where you'll make fundamental technical decisions, establish engineering standards, and directly shape how we build software at HILOS.

Responsibilities

• Backend Development & Architecture:
  • Own and evolve our Django backend—building and maintaining RESTful APIs, background task systems, and data models that power the creator platform
  • Design clean, well-tested application code in Python with strong patterns for maintainability and team velocity
  • Build platform abstractions for integrating external services (3D geometry engines, ML inference, rendering pipelines, manufacturing APIs)
  • Architect systems that allow clean swapping of providers and independent scaling of components as requirements evolve
  • Improve coding standards and architectural patterns for the engineering team to follow
• Database & Data Modeling:
  • Design and maintain PostgreSQL schemas with proper indexing, query optimization, and migration practices
  • Work with product engineers to build data models that support current features while anticipating future needs
  • Implement backup, recovery, and data integrity strategies
  • Manage schema evolution using Django migrations across dev, staging, and production environments
• DevOps & AWS Infrastructure:
  • Manage and improve our AWS infrastructure—keeping services running, deployments smooth, and costs under control
  • Own and evolve CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) for testing and deploying the Django application
  • Implement infrastructure-as-code practices (Terraform preferred) for AWS resource management
  • Maintain environment parity across dev, staging, and production
  • Manage secrets, environment configuration, and deployment automation
  • Establish practices that allow other engineers to safely make infrastructure changes independently
• Async Processing & Computational Workloads:
  • Build and maintain async job processing infrastructure (Celery, Redis, or similar) for computationally intensive workloads—3D model processing, algorithm execution, and batch operations
  • Design proper queuing, retry logic, dead letter handling, and job status visibility
  • Translate research prototypes from our Lab into production-ready systems
• Monitoring & Reliability:
  • Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting that catch issues before they impact creators
  • Maintain dashboards that provide visibility into system health and business-critical workflows
  • Ensure high uptime for creator-facing services through proactive monitoring and incident response
  • Document architecture, data flows, and operational procedures to enable team autonomy
• Technical Decision-Making & Strategy:
  • Drive build-vs-buy decisions for platform services, third-party integrations, and tooling
  • Balance startup constraints (cost, time-to-market, team size) with technical excellence and future scalability
  • Make pragmatic architectural choices that serve a small, fast-moving team
• Team Enablement & Knowledge Sharing:
  • Lead the team on API design, backend best practices, and deployment workflows
  • Mentor other engineers on Python/Django patterns, testing, and operational practices
  • Foster a culture of ownership, reliability, and continuous improvement

Qualifications

• 5+ years of production Python experience, with strong Django expertise building backend services and RESTful APIs
• Solid understanding of relational database design and optimization (PostgreSQL preferred), including schema design, indexing, migrations, and query performance
• Experience with async task processing systems (Celery, Redis, or similar) for handling background jobs and computational workloads
• Working knowledge of AWS services—enough to manage deployments, troubleshoot infrastructure issues, and make informed decisions about service choices
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions preferred), containerization (Docker), and basic infrastructure-as-code practices