Semantic/ Ontology Engineer

Position: Senior Semantic Engineer / Ontology Engineer

Location: East Hanover, NJ (Hybrid - 3x/week onsite)

Duration: 6 Months (extendable)

DESCRIPTION:

We are hiring a Senior Semantic Engineer / Ontology Engineer to lead the design of healthcare-grade ontologies and semantic layers that power trusted analytics, interoperable data products, and AI-ready knowledge systems. You will apply metrics-first semantic modeling and ontology engineering practices aligned to the principles such as clear semantics, reusable meaning, governance-by-design, and measurable business outcomes. You'll work across RDF and property graph paradigms and Snowflake semantic layer.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and evolve healthcare ontologies and semantic models to standardize meaning across domains (clinical, patient, provider, claims, access, quality, outcomes).

• Design data products that are AI-ready and leverage ontologies and semantic models

Build metrics-first semantic layers:

• Define canonical metric definitions, dimensions, hierarchies, and calculation rules.

• Ensure metrics are explainable, auditable, and consistently implemented across products and teams.

• Model knowledge in both RDF (RDFS/OWL) for formal semantics and interoperability.

• Property graphs for traversal-heavy use cases and relationship analytics.

Develop and maintain semantic artifacts:

• Concept schemes, entity models, vocabularies, mappings, and documentation.

• Alignment patterns between ontologies, data products, and downstream analytics/AI use cases.

Implement semantic integration patterns:

• Entity identity resolution, entity linking, terminology harmonization, and enrichment workflows.

Partner with platform teams to operationalize semantics in Snowflake:

• Enable semantic access patterns that support analytics and AI applications.

• Contribute to solutions that leverage Snowflake Cortex for semantic enrichment and assisted discovery (within established governance constraints).

Collaborate with governance and architecture stakeholders to embed:

• Versioning, stewardship workflows, quality checks, and change management for semantic assets.

• Guide best practices and mentor engineers/analysts on ontology engineering, graph modeling, and metrics-first design.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in semantic engineering, ontology engineering, knowledge graph development, or closely related roles.

• Demonstrated experience in healthcare data domains (payer/provider, clinical, claims, RWE, quality, outcomes, etc.).

• Strong hands-on ontology engineering experience: RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL and/or graph query experience

• Ontology modularization, alignment, and lifecycle management

• Experience with property graph modeling (e.g., Neo4j-style patterns) and translating between RDF and property graph representations when needed.

• Proven delivery of a metrics-first approach:

• Canonical KPIs/metrics definitions, dimensional modeling alignment, semantic consistency across BI and data products.

• Experience working with modern cloud data platforms, especially Snowflake, and exposure to Snowflake Cortex for AI-enabled workflows.

• Strong stakeholder communication skills: able to translate clinical/business intent into precise semantic definitions and usable artifacts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with healthcare interoperability and terminology standards (e.g., HL7/FHIR, SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD-10) and how to map/align them to enterprise semantics.

• Experience with semantic tooling and practices, validation rules, ontology testing, and CI/CD for semantic assets.

• Experience deploying semantic context layers