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, w