Senior Backend Software Architect

Company Overview
ImmunityBio is a vertically integrated commercial stage biotechnology company developing next-generation therapies that bolster the natural immune system to defeat cancers and infectious diseases. The Company’s range of immunotherapy and cell therapy platforms, alone and together, act to drive and sustain an immune response with the goal of creating durable and safe protection against disease. Designated an FDA Breakthrough Therapy, ANKTIVA is the first FDA-approved immunotherapy for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer CIS that activates NK cells, T cells, and memory T cells for a long-duration response. The Company is applying its science and platforms to treating cancers, including the development of potential cancer vaccines, as well as developing immunotherapies and cell therapies that we believe sharply reduce or eliminate the need for standard high-dose chemotherapy. These platforms and their associated product candidates are designed to be more effective, accessible, and easily administered than current standards of care in oncology and infectious diseases.

Why ImmunityBio?

• ImmunityBio is developing cutting-edge technology with the goal to transform the lives of patients with cancer and develop next-generation therapies and vaccines that complement, harness and amplify the immune system to defeat cancers and infectious diseases.

• Opportunity to join a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company with headquarters in Southern California.

• Work with a collaborative team with the ability to work across different areas of the company.

• Ability to join a growing company with professional development opportunities.

Position Summary

The Senior Backend Software Architect will drive technical excellence across our organization. This hybrid role combines hands-on software development with high-level system architecture and strategic technical leadership. You will design scalable, resilient systems while writing production-grade code, mentoring engineering teams, and serving as the technical bridge between business objectives and engineering execution. This role possesses deep full-stack expertise, proven experience designing enterprise-grade architecture, and the communication skills to align technical solutions with business goals.

Essential Functions

• Evaluate and select appropriate technologies, frameworks, and infrastructure based on scalability, security, and cost-efficiency requirements
• Create and maintain architectural decision records (ADRs), technical roadmaps, and system design documentation
• Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of backend software systems, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, performance, and long-term maintainability.
• Translate business objectives and technical requirements into architectural designs, implementation roadmaps, integration patterns, technical specifications, and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Define system boundaries, service interfaces, data flows, and architectural standards for distributed systems, APIs, event-driven services, and enterprise integrations.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through prototyping, development of critical components, code reviews, design reviews, and resolution of complex engineering challenges.
• Establish standards for API design, authentication, authorization, input validation, error handling, versioning, and backward compatibility.
• Design data architectures that support transactional integrity, efficient retrieval, appropriate consistency, data protection, retention, and recovery requirements.
• Incorporate security and privacy requirements throughout the software development lifecycle, including threat modeling, secrets management, encryption, access controls, and dependency management.
• Partner with DevOps, infrastructure, and security teams to establish automated build and deployment pipelines, infrastructure as code, environment controls, and secure release practices.
• Define observability and operational-readiness requirements, including logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, service-level objectives, runbooks, and disaster recovery.
• Collaborate with product management, frontend engineering, quality assurance, data engineering, cybersecurity, and business stakeholders to deliver cohesive solutions.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads, promote consistent engineering practices, and document architectural decisions, standards, and reference designs.
• Support major production incidents with technical investigation, identifying systemic causes, and recommending corrective actions.
• Review proposed exceptions to architectural standards and communicate associated risks, trade-offs, and mitigation plans to leadership.
• Drive innovation initiatives, R&D projects, and emerging technology adoption
• Create, edit and adhere to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), process improvements, and standardization of templates.
• Perform ad-hoc and cross-functional duties and/or projects assigned to support business needs and provide developmental opportunities.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a computer science field with 10+ years of relevant experience is required.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience is required.
• 3+ years of experience in architecture or technical lead capacity is required.
• Experience with microservices architecture, API design (REST, gRPC, GraphQL), and service mesh technologies is preferred.
• Experience with event-driven architecture (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, EventBridge) and stream processing is preferred.
• Previous industry experience in FinTech, Healthcare or SAAS is preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Advanced proficiency designing, developing, and supporting production backend applications, including substantial responsibility for enterprise architecture or senior technical leadership.
• Advanced proficiency in one or more backend programming languages, such as Java, C#, Python, Go, or TypeScript, with the ability to review code and guide implementation.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, asynchronous processing, fault tolerance, idempotency, retries, caching, and consistency trade-offs.
• Strong knowledge of architectural approaches, including modular monoliths, microservices, service-oriented architecture, event-driven architecture, and domain-driven design.
• Demonstrated ability to select an appropriate architecture rather than introduce unnecessary complexity.
• Expertise in RESTful APIs and enterprise integration patterns, with familiarity with GraphQL, gRPC, webhooks, and message-based interfaces as applicable.
• Strong knowledge of relational and nonrelational databases, including schema design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, replication, and data migration.
• Experience with message brokers, event-streaming platforms, background processing, and durable workflow orchestration.
• Proficiency with at least one major cloud platform—Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud—and familiarity with hybrid deployment considerations.
• Experience with containers, orchestration, serverless computing, infrastructure as code, source control, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong understanding of secure software design, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, role-based access control, least privilege, and protection of sensitive data.
• Experience implementing automated testing strategies, including unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, performance, and security testing.
• Ability to define and assess availability, latency, throughput, recovery, and capacity requirements and translate them into practical system designs.
• Familiarity with operational monitoring, centralized logging, distributed tracing, incident management, and root-cause analysis.
• Ability to assess technology costs, licensing implications, vendor dependencies, and total cost of ownership.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills, including the ability to explain architectural trade-offs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority, mentor engineers, resolve technical disagreements, and maintain alignment across multiple teams.
• Ability to balance delivery commitments with security, reliability, maintainability, and technical-debt priorities.
• Experience working in regulated or security-sensitive environments is preferred.
• Outstanding written & verbal communications skills.
• Outstanding analytical, mathematical, and creative problem-solving skills

Working Environment / Physical Environment

• This position works on-site or remote based on the candidate’s geographic location as noted in your offer letter.
• Regular work schedule is Monday – Friday, within standard business hours.  Flexibility is available with manager approval.
• Must possess mobility to work in a standard office setting and to use standard office equipment, including a computer.
• Lift and carry materials weighing up to 20 pounds
• This position requires extensive use of computer keyboards and monitors. 

ImmunityBio uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist with sourcing and identifying potential candidates for open positions. These tools help us reach qualified applicants and improve the efficiency of our recruitment outreach. No preference is given to applicants sourced or identified by AI tools.

Important: AI is not used to screen, evaluate, rank, assess, or make hiring decisions about applicants. All applications are reviewed by human recruiters and hiring managers. Hiring decisions are made solely by ImmunityBio personnel without automated decision-making.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity and ensure that all candidates are assessed based on their qualifications, skills, and experience through human review.

ImmunityBio employees are as valuable as the people we serve. We have built a resource of robust benefit offerings to best support the total wellbeing of our team members and their families. Our competitive total rewards benefits package, for eligible employees, include: Medical, Dental and Vision Plan Options • Health and Financial Wellness Programs • Employer Assistance Program (EAP) • Company Paid and Voluntary Life/AD&D, Short-Term and Long-Term Disability • Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts • 401(k) Retirement Plan with Company Match • 529 Education Savings Program • Voluntary Legal Services, Identity Theft Protection, Pet Insurance and Employee Discounts, Rewards and Perks • Paid Time Off (PTO) includes: 11 Holidays • Exempt Employees are eligible for Unlimited PTO • Non-Exempt Employees are eligible for 10 Vacation Days, 56 Hours of Health Pay, 2 Personal Days and 1 Cultural Day •  We are committed to providing you with the tools and resources you need to optimize your Health and Wellness.

At ImmunityBio, we are an equal opportunity employer dedicated to diversity in the workplace. Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified persons without regard to race, gender, color, disability, national origin, age, religion, union affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status, citizenship, gender identity and/or expression, or other status protected by law.