Custom software engineering

We build the software your business runs on.

HiLa Software designs, builds and modernizes web applications, backend services and cloud infrastructure. Our founder brings 15+ years of engineering experience, including core payments at Amazon and Apple Music tooling at Apple.

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Founder’s experience spans
Payments
Music streaming
Semiconductors
Biomedical research
Retail supply chains

Services

New products, aging systems and everything that keeps them running.

Bring us one of these problems or the whole stack.

Product engineering

Full-stack web applications, from the data model to the interface your customers and staff use every day.

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Svelte
  • Spring Boot
  • FastAPI
  • .NET
  • Rails

Legacy modernization

Upgrades and migrations for systems your business still depends on. We split monoliths into services, bring old runtimes up to date and move on-premises databases to managed cloud platforms.

  • PHP
  • Rails
  • Java EE
  • Oracle
  • MySQL
  • DynamoDB

Cloud and platform

Repeatable deployments on AWS and Azure, with containers, CI/CD pipelines and capacity planned for your busiest day.

  • AWS
  • Azure
  • EKS
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Docker
  • Jenkins

Backend and data systems

APIs and event-driven services for work where correctness matters, including retries, dead-letter handling, caching and data models built to last.

  • Kafka
  • SNS
  • SQS
  • Lambda
  • Redis
  • PostgreSQL
  • GraphQL

AI integration

LLM features with a defined job, such as customer support chatbots and automated code review, connected to the systems you already run.

  • OpenAI
  • Gemini
  • Python
  • TypeScript

Reliability and observability

Monitoring and dashboards that shorten the path from incident to root cause, plus hands-on training so your team can run them.

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Datadog
  • OpenLens

Track record

Built and run at serious scale.

The work below was done by our founder as an employee of Amazon and Apple. It is not HiLa client work, and neither company is affiliated with or endorses HiLa Software.

Users per minute across the wider payments platform at Amazon
~100K
Lower infrastructure cost after moving key payment services to native AWS
40%
Less time on root cause analysis and resolution at Apple
30%
Finance and operations teams served by internal payment tools, across 3 regions
50+

Amazon Payments

Splitting a payments monolith

Led five engineers defining the contract and data model for a disbursements service, as Amazon Payments moved to separate services for refunds, disbursements and captures.

  • Java
  • Spring Boot
  • System design

Amazon Payments

Moving core payments to AWS

Migrated key payment services from internal infrastructure to native AWS, and converted key systems from Oracle to DynamoDB to remove the Oracle dependency.

  • AWS
  • DynamoDB
  • Kafka
  • SNS

Apple

Scaling a legacy app for live events

Modernized the deployment of a Ruby on Rails event-scheduling application on Amazon EKS, then scaled it through outages during a major live music event.

  • Ruby on Rails
  • EKS
  • Kubernetes

Apple

Shipping LLM-powered tools

Created an end-user support chatbot with a Gemini-powered backend, and shipped a VS Code extension that runs automated code reviews using OpenAI models.

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Gemini
  • OpenAI

Process

A clear path from first call to handover.

  1. Understand

    We learn the business problem, the people using the system and what you already have in place.

  2. Plan

    We agree on architecture, scope and milestones, so you know what comes next and why.

  3. Build

    We ship in small increments, with automated tests, CI/CD and regular reviews.

  4. Hand over

    You get monitoring, documentation and training, so your team can run what we built.

Portrait of Lamine Kacimi

Founder

Lamine Kacimi

Senior full-stack engineer

LinkedIn profile

Lamine has spent more than 15 years building production software across the full stack, and has led teams of up to five engineers.

At Amazon, Lamine contributed to the move of Amazon Payments from a monolith to separate authority services, and helped launch Amazon in Sweden and Poland. At Apple, Lamine built reactive Java services and React applications, and led four engineers in adopting GraphQL.

Career

  1. 2026–nowSenior Full-Stack EngineerAMD
  2. 2023–2025Software Development EngineerApple
  3. 2017–2023Software Development Engineer IIAmazon
  4. 2016–2017Java ProgrammerTexas Biomedical Research Institute
  5. 2015–2016PHP and Web DeveloperPIC Business Systems

B.S. in Computer Science, National Institute of Technology, Algiers

Contact

Tell us what you’re building.

Send a short note about your project and where it stands today. We’ll reply with next steps.

(713) 347-3052

Houston, Texas