Senior Ontologist, Knowledge Systems

Job Title: Senior Ontologist, Knowledge Systems

Supervisor: Director of Product Management

Department: Product Management

Salary Range: $168k - $188k base salary, based on qualifications and experience (Plus additional targeted bonus)

Location: Remote - Preferred States: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Job Summary:

TraceGains is seeking a Senior Ontologist to lead the development, management, and strategic expansion of TraceGains' taxonomies, ontologies, and knowledge graph infrastructure. This role is pivotal in ensuring data interoperability, metadata quality, and AI-driven insights across our product ecosystem. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in ontology engineering, semantic web technologies, and knowledge graph development, combined with strong leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams.

As a senior team member, you will drive ontology development efforts, work closely with AI teams to develop LLM-friendly ontologies and generative AI-powered schema, and establish best practices for data governance and knowledge management. You will play a critical role in supporting TraceGains' mission to build leading AI solutions for innovation and quality applications in the CPG industry.

We are revolutionizing information exchange across the supply chain using AI:

• Work at the forefront of AI-powered knowledge management and enterprise ontology engineering.
• Lead cutting-edge ontology and knowledge graph initiatives that impact regulatory compliance, food safety, and sustainability in the global food & beverage supply chain.
• Collaborate with world-class teams in AI, Data Science, and Product Management to create next-generation intelligent applications.
• Contribute to building leading AI solutions that drive innovation and quality applications for CPG companies.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and a dynamic environment that values innovation, leadership, and continuous learning.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Lead Ontology & Knowledge Graph Strategy: Develop and maintain semantically rich and scalable ontologies and taxonomies that enhance AI, metadata management, and product knowledge
• AI & LLM Integration: Work with AI and ML teams to develop LLM-friendly ontologies, leveraging generative AI models to automate schema creation and optimize knowledge discovery
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product, Engineering, AI, Data Science, and Regulatory teams to align ontology structures with business goals and customer needs.
• Data Governance & Quality Management: Define governance frameworks to ensure ontology integrity, metadata standardization, and data consistency across TraceGains' systems.
• Knowledge Graph Development: Design, implement, and optimize large-scale knowledge graphs, ensuring interoperability across structured and unstructured data sources.
• Scalability & Enterprise Applications: Expand TraceGains' ontology framework across multiple CPG sub-verticals, supporting knowledge retrieval, compliance automation, and AI-driven insights
• Mentorship & Thought Leadership: Provide guidance to Knowledge Engineering, Product, and R&D teams to contribute to industry best practices, and represent TraceGains in conferences, publications, and professional forums.
• Stakeholder Communication: Translate complex technical concepts into actionable insights, ensuring internal teams understand and leverage ontology-driven data structures effectively.
• Emerging Technology Trends: Stay ahead of advancements in ontology engineering, semantic search, graph embedding, and AI-driven knowledge management.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Job Requirements:

• Education & Experience:
  
  
  
  • B.S., Master's or Ph.D. in Information Science, Computer Science, Linguistics, Library Science, or a related field preferred
    
    
    
    • Or
    
    
    
    
  • 7+ years of experience in ontology development, knowledge graph engineering, or taxonomy design in a real-world enterprise setting.
  
  
  
  
• Technical Expertise:
  
  
  
  • Proficiency in ontology languages and semantic web standards (OWL, RDF, SKOS, SPARQL, SHACL) - RDF required
  • Experience with ontology and taxonomy development tools (e.g., Protege, TopBraid EDG, PoolParty) - TopBraid required
  • Strong understanding of FAIR data principles and enterprise data governance.
  • Knowledge of graph databases (Neo4j, Stardog, AWS Neptune) and semantic search technologies.
  • Familiarity with AI/ML techniques, including graph embeddings and LLM-driven schema generation.
  
  
  
  
• Leadership & Collaboration:
  
  
  
  • Proven experience in leading ontology teams or managing large-scale knowledge engineering projects.
  • Ability to mentor junior ontologists and foster collaboration across disciplines.
  • Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate technical details into business value.
  • Ability to be a positive team player, willing to grow and change
  
  
  
  
• Preferred Qualifications:
  
  
  
  • Hands-on experience with generative AI models for ontology creation and data augmentation.
  • Familiarity with SQL, Open Cypher, or graph query languages.
  • Experience integrating ontologies into SaaS platforms or data-driven enterprise applications.
  • Understanding of data science workflows and machine learning models in knowledge retrieval.
  
  
  
  
• Occasional travel required for department meetings, all company events, in-person seminars/networking events, etc.
• Successful completion of a background screening process including, but not limited to, employment verifications, criminal search, OFAC, SS Verification, as well as credit screening, where applicable and in accordance with federal and local regulations

** Accepting applications until 03/28/2025 **

Why you'll want to join us:

Founded in 2008, TraceGains connects people and information so teams can work smarter. As a global technology company, we provide networked innovation, quality, and compliance solutions to consumer brands that want to reduce supply chain risk, speed up business processes, and take control of data. On average, companies find 80% of their suppliers already on TraceGains Network, allowing them to connect and collaborate instantly.

Plus, we offer great benefits, including:

• Health, dental, vision, life insurance, AD&D, STD, and LTD coverage, supplemental (accident, hospital & indemnity, and hospital) coverage, paid parental leave, pet insurance, identity theft, and more!
• Fully remote work environment.
• Flexible paid time off available on your date of hire
• A 401(k) plan and company match for saving for your future

• Company Paid Volunteer Days
• Advancement opportunities and promoting from within

TraceGains provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Applicants must be over the age of 18 and have proof of authorization to work in the U.S. for consideration.

TraceGains participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your I-9 information upon hire to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.

Employees interested in applying:

Please reach out to your HR Department for details.

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