Senior Ontologist

Cyberhill is seeking a Senior Ontologist to design, develop, and maintain enterprise-level ontologies that power advanced AI and semantic reasoning applications. This role involves expanding our core ontology into domain- and client-specific models, collaborating with subject matter experts, and ensuring consistency across knowledge representation frameworks. The ideal candidate brings 5+ years of enterprise ontology experience, expertise in semantic web technologies, and strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

Job Overview

Cyberhill is seeking a highly experienced Senior Ontologist with a strong theoretical foundation in ontology development, knowledge representation, and semantic technologies to support our growing artificial intelligence initiatives.

In this role, you will help develop and maintain Cyberhill's core upper ontology while extending its capabilities through domain- and client-specific ontologies. You will collaborate with technical teams and subject matter experts to build scalable, semantically grounded AI solutions that support enterprise applications.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with strong analytical thinking, creativity, and the ability to translate complex concepts into practical solutions. This position offers the opportunity to shape the semantic foundation of innovative AI applications while working across diverse industries and client environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with fellow ontologists to design, develop, maintain, and enhance Cyberhill's core and domain-specific ontologies.
• Establish and promote ontology development standards, best practices, and quality assurance processes.
• Partner with client subject matter experts (SMEs) to gather domain knowledge, define competency questions, and validate ontology models against client data.
• Develop and maintain ontology artifacts, including RDF and Turtle (.rdf, .ttl) files, visualizations, and technical documentation.
• Ensure consistency, interoperability, and comprehensive coverage across ontology layers.
• Develop, review, and troubleshoot RML/R2RML mappings to represent the semantic meaning of enterprise data sources.
• Support the integration of ontologies into AI applications, knowledge graphs, and semantic reasoning systems.
• Communicate complex ontological concepts to technical teams, business stakeholders, and client representatives.
• Adapt ontology models efficiently to support emerging domains, evolving client requirements, and new AI use cases.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in ontology development, knowledge representation, or semantic technologies within enterprise environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Computational Linguistics, Library and Information Science, Computer Science, or a related field emphasizing logic, analytical reasoning, and critical thinking.
• Strong knowledge of ontology and knowledge representation languages, including RDF/RDFS, OWL, CLIF, and CycL.
• Experience with ontology constraint and validation languages, such as SHACL and ShEx.
• Proficiency with ontology development tools, such as Protégé or TopBraid.
• Working knowledge of rule-based reasoning languages and frameworks, including SWRL, Datalog, or Drools.
• Demonstrated ability to develop, execute, and troubleshoot SPARQL queries.
• Familiarity with W3C standards and other open ontology and semantic web standards.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate effectively in multidisciplinary teams and work independently in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Philosophy, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Library and Information Science, or a related discipline.
• Experience leading technical projects, managing teams, or coordinating ontology development initiatives.
• Experience with inference engine development, inference path architecture, or inference debugging.
• Demonstrated success designing or implementing enterprise-scale, ontology-driven AI solutions.
• Experience working with relational databases and SQL.
• Experience developing or integrating enterprise knowledge graphs and semantic reasoning applications.