Senior Backend Software Architect

Description

The company is a publicly traded, vertically integrated, commercial-stage biotech headquartered in Southern California. It builds immunotherapies and cell therapies that strengthen the immune system against cancers and infectious diseases, and it believes these can sharply reduce or eliminate the need for standard high-dose chemotherapy.

Its first FDA-approved immunotherapy, which holds Breakthrough Therapy designation, treats non-muscle invasive bladder cancer CIS by activating NK cells, T cells and memory T cells for a long-lasting response.

This is a hybrid senior role that combines hands-on coding with system architecture and technical leadership. You will connect business goals to engineering delivery and help the team build scalable, resilient backend systems. The company is growing, and the team works across many areas of the business.

Responsibilities

• Set the architecture, design and evolution of backend systems so they stay scalable, reliable, secure, fast and easy to maintain.
• Turn business goals and technical requirements into architecture designs, roadmaps, integration patterns, technical specifications and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Choose technologies, frameworks and infrastructure by weighing scalability, security and cost.
• Define system boundaries, service interfaces, data flows and standards for distributed systems, APIs, event-driven services and enterprise integrations.
• Write and maintain architecture decision records, technical roadmaps and system design documentation.
• Lead through prototyping, building critical components, running code and design reviews, and solving hard engineering problems.
• Set standards for API design, authentication, authorization, input validation, error handling, versioning and backward compatibility.
• Design data architecture for transactional integrity, efficient retrieval, consistency, data protection, retention and recovery.
• Build security and privacy into every stage of development, including threat modeling, secrets management, encryption, access controls and dependency management.
• Work with DevOps, infrastructure and security teams on automated build and deployment pipelines, infrastructure as code, environment controls and secure releases.
• Define requirements for logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, service-level objectives, runbooks and disaster recovery.
• Partner with product management, frontend engineering, quality assurance, data engineering, cybersecurity and business stakeholders to deliver cohesive solutions.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads, encourage consistent engineering practices, and document decisions, standards and reference designs.
• Investigate major production incidents, identify systemic causes and recommend corrective actions.
• Assess requests for exceptions to architectural standards and explain the risks, trade-offs and mitigation plans to leadership.
• Lead innovation initiatives, R&D projects and the adoption of emerging technology.
• Write and refine standard operating procedures, process improvements and templates.
• Take on ad-hoc and cross-functional work and projects that support business needs and offer development opportunities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a computer science field and 10+ years of relevant experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 3+ years in an architecture or technical lead role.
• Advanced experience building and supporting production backend applications, with substantial responsibility for enterprise architecture or senior technical leadership.
• Advanced skill in at least one backend language such as Java, C, Python, Go or TypeScript, with the ability to review code and guide implementation.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, including concurrency, asynchronous processing, fault tolerance, idempotency, retries, caching and consistency trade-offs.
• Solid knowledge of modular monoliths, microservices, service-oriented architecture, event-driven architecture and domain-driven design, and the judgment to avoid unnecessary complexity.
• Expertise in REST APIs and enterprise integration patterns, with working familiarity with GraphQL, gRPC, webhooks and message-based interfaces where relevant.
• Strong grasp 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 in at least one major cloud platform (Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud) and familiarity with hybrid deployments.
• Experience with containers, orchestration, serverless computing, infrastructure as code, source control and CI/CD pipelines.
• Solid understanding of secure software design, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, role-based access control, least privilege and protection of sensitive data.
• Experience with automated testing, including unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, performance and security testing.
• Ability to define and assess availability, latency, throughput, recovery and capacity requirements and turn them into practical designs.
• Familiarity with operational monitoring, centralized logging, distributed tracing, incident management and root-cause analysis.
• Ability to assess technology costs, licensing, vendor dependencies and total cost of ownership.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, documentation and communication skills, including explaining architectural trade-offs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority, mentor engineers, resolve technical disagreements and keep several teams aligned.
• Ability to balance delivery commitments with security, reliability, maintainability and technical debt.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication, along with analytical, mathematical and creative problem-solving skills.
• Preferred: experience with microservices architecture, API design (REST, gRPC, GraphQL) and service mesh technologies.
• Preferred: experience with event-driven architecture (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, EventBridge) and stream processing.
• Preferred: industry experience in FinTech, healthcare or SaaS.
• Preferred: experience working in regulated or security-sensitive environments.

Conditions

Work is on-site or remote, depending on your geographic location as stated in your offer letter.

Regular schedule is Monday to Friday during standard business hours, with flexibility available with manager approval.

You must be able to work in a standard office setting and use standard office equipment, including a computer.

The role involves lifting and carrying materials up to 20 pounds.

The role involves extensive use of keyboards and monitors.

Candidates are assessed on qualifications, skills and experience through human review.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision plan options for eligible employees.
• Health and financial wellness programs and an employee assistance program.
• Company-paid and voluntary life and AD&D insurance, plus short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• Healthcare and dependent care flexible spending accounts.
• 401(k) retirement plan with company match and a 529 education savings program.
• Voluntary legal services, identity theft protection, pet insurance, employee discounts, rewards and perks.
• 11 paid holidays.
• Exempt employees receive unlimited PTO.
• Non-exempt employees receive 10 vacation days, 56 hours of health pay, 2 personal days and 1 cultural day.
• Tools and resources to support your health and wellness.