Ontologist, Agentic Platform Architect

About Kinaxis Are you looking to join an innovative, market-leading company where you can truly elevate your career? At Kinaxis we are serious about culture, we are serious about technology, we are serious about customers, and we are serious about not taking ourselves too seriously. If you are looking to be part of an incredible growth story, then we might just be the place for you! In 1984, we started out as a team of three engineers. Today, we have grown to become a global organization with over 2000 employees around the world, 6 global office and a best-in-class HQ in Ottawa, Canada. As winners of several Top Employer awards globally, we are proud to work with our customers and employees towards solving some of the biggest challenges facing supply chains today. Kinaxis is a global leader in modern supply chain orchestration, powering complex global supply chains, and supporting the people who manage them. Our powerful, AI infused platform provides full transparency and visibility across end-to-end supply chains, enabling our customers to make faster, better decisions. We are trusted by renowned global brands to provide the agility and predictability needed to navigate today’s volatility and disruption. With more than 40,000 users in over 100 countries, we are expanding our team as we continue to innovate and revolutionize how we support our customers. Location Ottawa and Toronto, CA - Hybrid Other Canadian locations - Remote About the team The AI team is responsible for advancing machine learning solutions in the supply and demand space across industries such as Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Life Sciences. Our work spans forecasting, optimization, replenishment, recommendation, explainability, and emerging AI techniques that help customers solve complex, real-world planning challenges. What makes this team unique is that we operate at the intersection of applied research, product innovation, and customer impact. We explore new methods, develop novel approaches, and turn them into practical capabilities that can shape the future of the Kinaxis platform. This is a team for people who want to work on meaningful problems, push the boundaries of applied AI in real business settings, and see their ideas influence products used by customers around the world. Vacancy Status This is an existing job vacancy What you will do You bring deep expertise in knowledge representation, semantic systems, and applied AI, and you are energized by translating complex enterprise domains into structured, machine-understandable models. You are comfortable working through ambiguity and building early systems that demonstrate clear value. You own the enterprise knowledge model including entities, relationships, actions, constraints, and how they evolve over time. You define and govern ontology standards, ensuring clear layering, reuse, and consistency across systems. You provide technical leadership while remaining hands-on in semantic architecture and knowledge graph development. You design and evolve enterprise knowledge graph platforms that integrate structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, enabling reasoning, inference, and contextual retrieval. You design the underlying data and graph architecture, including ingestion pipelines, transformation and mapping, entity resolution, schema alignment, validation, and both batch and streaming updates. You guide key technical decisions across ontology design, graph architecture, and AI integration, including trade-offs between materialized inference, constraint validation, and query-time reasoning at scale. You partner closely with product and engineering to ensure models are practical, scalable, and aligned to real-world use cases. You will mentor others and help build a culture of structured thinking, semantic clarity and innovation. What we are looking for PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, or a related field. Extensive experience modeling complex domains, with a track record of building enterprise ontologies and knowledge graph systems in production. Strong hands-on experience building prototypes, proof-of-concepts, and early semantic systems that demonstrate the value of structured knowledge. Deep expertise in ontology design and semantic modeling, including entities, relationships, constraints, and temporal or event-based modeling. Experience defining ontology governance, versioning, and lifecycle management, and driving reuse and alignment across domains. Ability to define long-term evolution strategies for the enterprise knowledge model and platform, balancing delivery with durable design. Experience applying research and emerging techniques in knowledge representation, semantic systems, or AI, with a track record of translating new concepts into practical, product-oriented solutions. Architect large-scale enterprise knowledge graphs that integrate structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Hands-on experience with knowledge graph platforms and pipelines, including designing, ingestion, transformation, entity resolution, schema/ontology alignment, validation and performance at scale. Drives the technical evaluation of emerging graph, semantic, and AI technologies with clear, defensible trade-off analysis Understanding and familiarity of modern AI approaches such as agentic systems, LLMs, RAG, and explainable AI, with the ability to integrate structured knowledge effectively. Demonstrated ability to identify, evaluate, and apply emerging research and technologies in knowledge representation, semantic systems, and AI, translating them into scalable architecture patterns and product capabilities that enable reuse, composability, and extensibility across products Strong technical judgment and the ability to evaluate emerging semantic, graph, and AI technologies. Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across domains through expertise, credibility, and collaboration. Strong programming ability (e.g., Python) and experience with modern data, graph, and cloud platforms. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to bring clarity and alignment to complex concepts. Nice to Have Deep experience with semantic technologies (e.g., RDF, OWL, SHACL, SPARQL) Experience in supply chain, planning, or other complex operational domains Background in temporal modeling, digital twins, or operational intelligence systems Experience contributing to research, standards, or innovation in semantic systems or applied AI Experience with enterprise SaaS environments and operating semantic/AI platforms at scale #Senior Work With Impact: Our platform directly helps companies power the world’s supply chains. We see the results of what we do out in the world every day, when we see store shelves stocked, when medications are available for our loved ones, and so much more. Work with Fortune 500 Brands: Companies across industries trust us to help them take control of their integrated business planning and digital supply chain. Some of our customers include Lockheed Martin, Unilever, P&G, ExxonMobil, Cisco and more. Social Responsibility at Kinaxis: Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee weighs in on hiring practices, talent assessment training materials, and mandatory training on unconscious bias and inclusion fundamentals. Sustainability is key to what we do and we’re committed to a long-term net-zero operations strategy. We are involved in our communities and support causes where we can make the most impact. People matter at Kinaxis and here are some of the perks and benefits we offer, which may vary by location and employee: Flexible vacation and Kinaxis Days (company-wide days off) Flexible work options Physical and mental well-being programs Regularly scheduled virtual fitness classes Mentorship programs, training, and career development Recognition programs and referral rewards Hackathons For more information, visit the Kinaxis website at www.kinaxis.com or the company’s blog at http://blog.kinaxis.com. Kinaxis welcomes candidates to apply to our inclusive community. We provide accommodations upon request to ensure fairness and accessibility throughout our recruitment process for all candidates, including those with specific needs or disabilities. If you require an accommodation, please reach out to us at [email protected]. This contact information is for accessibility requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications. Kinaxis is committed to ensuring a fair and transparent recruitment process. We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the initial step of the recruitment process to compare submitted resumes against the job description to identify candidates whose education, experience, and skills most closely match the requirements of the role. After the initial screening, all subsequent decisions regarding your application, including final selection, are made by our human recruitment team. AI does not make any final hiring decisions.