Software Engineer, AI

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 Software Engineer – AI is a hands-on role integrating data engineering, software development, and AI agent architecture, working closely with platform engineering, data science, security, and product teams. The Software Engineer – AI will contribute to AI agent development and collaborate with cross-functional teams on the implementation of production-grade AI systems. This role supports Engineering leadership by implementing change-controlled solutions, helping maintain project schedules and quality standards, and providing technical support for daily AI-powered operations — including the implementation and improvement of agent frameworks and supporting infrastructure.

Essential Functions

• Contribute to the design, development, maintenance, and deployment of AI agent systems, including one or more of LangGraph StateGraph patterns, CrewAI multi-agent orchestration, LlamaIndex data/agent workflows, or related frameworks.
• Design, build, and maintain FastAPI-based agent servers, including async/await endpoints, streaming responses, and health check endpoints, following established architecture and coding standards.
• Implement comprehensive testing strategies — unit, integration, edge-case, and performance — for agents and services to ensure production reliability.
• Implement and extend guardrails for AI interactions, including input/output validation, safety checks, prompt hardening, policy enforcement, and robust error handling in alignment with organizational security and compliance standards.
• Implement secure tool execution patterns adhering to least-privilege access, allowlists, secrets management, audit logging, and validation controls against prompt injection/data exfiltration under guidance from senior engineers.
• Implement agent observability including per-step traces, tool-call telemetry, cost/latency budgets, and SLO-based alerting using existing monitoring and logging platforms.
• Help design and maintain agent evaluation sets, adversarial tests, regression tests, and monitoring for safety/quality drift.
• Design and build RAG/retrieval pipelines using vector databases such as Chroma, Milvus, Weaviate, and Qdrant, working with data and platform teams on schema and performance.
• Collaborate with SMEs across Platform Engineering, Data Science, Security, Quality, and Product to ensure agent systems meet technical and operational requirements.
• Contribute to the creation, modification, and maintenance of AI system documentation, including architecture decision records (ADRs), runbooks, API specifications, network topology diagrams, data flow diagrams, and best-practice guides.
• Provide technical input regarding operability, technical feasibility, engineering design, security posture, maintainability, and documentation requirements.
• Assist with the planning and implementation of AI agent-based projects and solutions in collaboration with cross-functional teams, helping deliver on cost, timeline, and quality targets.
• Implement and support containerized deployment, start-up, commissioning, and release qualification activities using Docker multi-stage builds, dependency management, and container health check best practices.
• Collaborate with and learn from senior engineers; may occasionally assist less experienced engineers through code reviews and pairing on troubleshooting AI agent and service-related issues.
• Follow and improve Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), process improvements, and standard engineering templates for agent development.
• Monitor agent performance and reliability, collect metrics and logs, and use data to propose and implement optimization opportunities.
• Performs ad-hoc and cross-functional duties and/or projects as assigned to support business needs and provide developmental opportunities.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field with 3+ years of relevant software development experience is required.
• 2+ years of hands-on Python development experience, with proficiency in Python 3.12+ and modern language features (type hints, async/await, etc.) is required.
• 2+ years of hands-on Typescript development experience.
• Experience with at least one AI agent framework (LangGraph, LangChain, CrewAI, or LlamaIndex) in a production or near-production setting is required.
• Experience building and running containerized applications with Docker, including multi-stage builds and foundational DevOps practices, is required.
• Experience with troubleshooting and system optimization in an enterprise or regulated environment is preferred.
• Experience working within an organization with formal change control, compliance, or audit requirements is preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team environment.
• Strong technical writing, communication, and organizational skills, including the ability to produce concise READMEs, architecture documents, and runbooks.
• Solid understanding of engineering principles required to support secure, production-grade AI services and infrastructure.
• Strong working knowledge and hands-on experience with AI agent frameworks, orchestration patterns, and context-management strategies.
• Ability to take ownership of well-scoped projects and collaborate closely with senior engineers on larger initiatives.
• Proficiency in data analytics, monitoring, and observability tooling (metrics, logging, tracing, dashboards) for production services.
• Solid understanding of API design principles, error handling patterns, and security best practices for backend services.
• Familiarity with AI safety and guardrail patterns, including prompt hardening and content filtering methodologies.

Working Environment / Physical Environment

• This position will either work onsite in Dunkirk NY
• 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. 

This position is eligible for a discretionary bonus and equity award. The annual base pay range for this position is below. The specific rate will depend on the successful candidate’s qualifications, prior experience as well as geographic location.

$130,500 (entry-level qualifications) to $145,000 (highly experienced) annually

The application window is anticipated to close on 60 days from when it is posted or sooner if the position is filled or closed.

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.