About Hike Medical

Hike Medical is building the defining company in musculoskeletal care. We sit at the intersection of AI, robotics, and healthcare, operating across three product lines: a proprietary AI-vision platform that turns a 30 second web-based foot scan into custom 3D-printed orthotics, an AI agent platform that automates the entire DME workflow from pre-visit processing to claims and revenue cycle, and SoleForge, our vertically integrated 3D printing factory producing custom medical devices at a scale the industry has never seen.

Our customers are both the largest employers on earth and the biggest companies in orthotics and prosthetics. On the clinical side, we're live across the industry's largest national providers. On the employer side, Fortune 50 companies trust us to protect their on-their-feet workforces.

But custom insoles are just the wedge. Our long-term vision is bionics: AI-designed, robotically manufactured orthotic and prosthetic devices at scale, replacing a fragmented, manual industry that hasn't changed in decades. Insoles today, full DME tomorrow, bionics by 2040. Read the full vision at bionics2040.com.

We've stealthily raised $22M through Seed and Series A backed by top-tier investors who invested early in companies like OpenAI, Anduril, and Mercury. We run a fast, results first, high ownership culture out of our new SF Rincon Hill office, and for this role out of our state of the art Peoria 3D print facility: SoleForge. If you want to work on problems that sit at the frontier of AI, manufacturing, and healthcare, this is the place.

The Role

As a Senior Embedded Software Engineer, you'll be the boots-on-the-ground technical force behind Hike's physical manufacturing operation — the place where our software meets the real world. Based in Peoria, IL, you'll work directly on our production print farm, bridging the gap between the engineering teams in Boston and SF and the operational floor. You'll own the software systems that keep our 3D printers running at scale — from job dispatch and queue management to automation tooling that makes our operations faster, smarter, and more reliable.

This isn't a remote role, and it isn't a theoretical one. You'll be hands-on with hardware every day, shipping real improvements that directly impact how many insoles we can produce, how reliably we can produce them, and how quickly we can respond when things go sideways.

Why This Opportunity is Career-Defining:

• You'll own a critical layer of a healthcare manufacturing stack — the intersection of physical hardware and production software at scale.

• Your work will have immediate, visible impact: better automation means more insoles, faster, for people who need them.

• You'll be a connective tissue hire — embedded in operations but a full member of the engineering team, with a direct line to leadership.

• You'll build in an environment where speed and trust are the currency, and bureaucracy is a four-letter word.

What You'll Work On:

• Own and evolve the software systems that manage printer queue orchestration, job dispatch, and fleet-level monitoring across our print farm.

• Build automation tooling that reduces manual operational overhead and improves throughput and reliability at scale.

• Instrument hardware systems to surface real-time operational data — failures, throughput, utilization — into dashboards and alerting pipelines.

• Collaborate closely with the Boston/SF engineering team to translate operational needs into well-architected backend services and APIs.

• Be the on-the-ground technical authority for operational floor initiatives — scoping, coordinating, and driving execution when it counts.

• Identify and eliminate failure points in the physical-to-digital loop, from print job creation through to fulfillment.

Ideal Candidate Profile:

Technical Skills

• Proven experience working with hardware systems — you've written software that talks to physical devices and you understand what that means in practice.

• Comfortable with hardware communication protocols (USB, serial, REST/HTTP APIs, or vendor SDKs) and debugging at the hardware-software boundary.

• TypeScript and Node.js proficiency — you can build and maintain production-grade backend services.

• AWS familiarity — you understand cloud infrastructure well enough to design systems that bridge on-prem hardware with cloud services.

• Experience building monitoring, alerting, or automation tooling in operational or manufacturing environments is a strong plus.

Helpful Characteristics

• Operationally Grounded – You don't just write software for the floor; you understand what's happening on it. You're comfortable getting your hands dirty.

• Bridge Builder – You're as comfortable in a Slack thread with engineers in Boston/SF as you are troubleshooting a printer in Peoria at 7am.

• Bias for Clarity – You translate messy operational problems into clean technical solutions, and you communicate both directions fluently.

• Ownership Mentality – When something breaks on the floor, you're the one who figures out why — and makes sure it doesn't happen again.

• Mission-Focused – You want to build systems that help people move without pain, not optimize ad clicks.

Hiring Manager

• Nik Varshney (CTO) – LinkedIn