A subset of vertices in a graph is called resolving when the geodesic distances to those vertices uniquely distinguish every vertex in the graph. Here, we characterize the resolvability of Hamming graphs in terms of a constrained linear system and deduce a novel but straightforward characterization of resolvability for hypercubes. We propose an integer linear programming method to assess resolvability rapidly and provide a more costly but definite method based on Gröbner bases to determine whether or not a set of vertices resolves an arbitrary Hamming graph. As proof of concept, we identify a resolving set of size 77 in the metric space of all octapeptides (i.e., proteins composed of eight amino acids) with respect to the Hamming distance; in particular, any octamer may be readily represented as a 77-dimensional real vector. Representing $k$-mers as low-dimensional numerical vectors may enable new applications of machine learning algorithms to symbolic sequences.