Ontologist

Position Summary

The Ontologist supports mission-critical objectives under the referenced work order by developing and maintaining ontologies, enforcing W3C standards, and ensuring data consistency for structured data integration, semantic search, and AI-assisted decision support. This role collaborates with data scientists and analysts to ensure ontology-driven tagging and entity resolution enhance research output relevance.

This future opportunity is contingent upon award.

Job Description

• The Ontologist is responsible for developing, refining, and maintaining domain-specific ontologies to support structured data integration, semantic search, and AI-assisted decision support.
• The position requires enforcing adherence to W3C standards and metadata alignment between Databricks Unity Catalog, GIS metadata systems, and operational data stores.
• Ontologists will collaborate with data scientists and analysts to ensure ontology-driven tagging and entity resolution enhance the relevance of research outputs.
• The role includes submitting Ontology Governance & Standardization Reports detailing ontology updates, integrations, and compliance with metadata standards.

Required Qualifications and Experience

The contractor shall provide personnel who meet one of the following requirements:

• Master's degree or higher in Computer Science, Data Science, Business Analytics, Cognitive Science, or a closely related field; or
• A minimum of eleven (11) years of professional experience in ontology development and semantic technologies.

Candidates must have demonstrated expertise in the following areas:

• Ontology design and semantic data modeling.
• SPARQL query development.
• W3C standards (RDF, OWL, SHACL) and supporting frameworks like Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Common Core Ontologies (CCO).
• Java and Python for ontology-driven application development.
• Bash scripting for automation tasks.

Required Skills and Competencies

• Expertise in W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) and SPARQL queries.
• Working knowledge of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Common Core Ontologies (CCO).
• Proficiency in Java, Python, and Bash scripting.
• Strong understanding of ESRI data tools including ArcGIS.
• Background in Dev Sec Ops  practices, version control systems (Git), and CI/CD pipelines.

Education

• Master's degree or higher in a relevant field, or an equivalent combination of education and extensive experience.
• Expertise in ontology design and SPARQL query development required.

Clearance Requirement

• No clearance required for off-site duty location, or the ability to obtain and maintain the required clearance as specified by the program.