Ontology Engineer

We are looking for an experienced Ontology Engineer to join a global data and digital organization within a leading pharmaceutical company. In this role, you will help shape the semantic foundations of enterprise scientific data by designing, implementing, and maintaining ontologies that improve data interoperability, traceability, discoverability, and AI readiness.

You will collaborate closely with scientists, data engineers, architects, product teams, and business stakeholders to transform complex scientific concepts into reusable semantic models and knowledge structures. Your work will directly support research, development, manufacturing, and advanced analytics initiatives across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain ontologies, taxonomies, semantic models, and controlled vocabularies
  


• Translate scientific and business concepts into standardized ontology structures and semantic representations
  


• Create mappings between source systems, metadata assets, and ontology concepts
  


• Collaborate with domain experts to define terminology, relationships, constraints, and semantic patterns
  


• Evaluate external ontologies and semantic standards for reuse and integration
  


• Support ontology governance, documentation, versioning, and lifecycle management
  


• Contribute to knowledge graph, metadata management, and semantic data platform initiatives
  


• Ensure semantic consistency, interoperability, and reuse across enterprise data products
  


• Partner with data engineering and architecture teams to integrate semantic models into technical solutions
  


• Support FAIR data principles and enterprise data standardization efforts
  

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Bioinformatics, Cheminformatics, Data Science, or a related field
  


• Proven experience with ontology engineering, semantic technologies, knowledge representation, or knowledge graph development
  


• Strong understanding of Semantic Web standards:
  
  
  
  • RDF / RDFS
    
  
  
  • OWL
    
  
  
  • SPARQL
    
  
  
  • SHACL
    
  
  


• Experience designing ontologies and semantic models from business and domain requirements
  


• Strong understanding of metadata management, controlled vocabularies, identifiers, and semantic interoperability
  


• Experience working with diverse data sources and enterprise data ecosystems
  


• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and stakeholder communication skills
  

Nice to Have

• Experience within pharmaceutical, biotechnology, life sciences, chemistry, or biology domains
  


• Knowledge of ontology design patterns and semantic modeling best practices
  


• Understanding of FAIR Data Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)
  


• Experience with knowledge graphs and graph databases
  


• Familiarity with scientific data management platforms, ELN systems, or CMC environments
  


• Experience working in Agile environments using Jira and Confluence
  

Benefits

• Location: Prague - Smíchov, (Hybrid – 1–2 days onsite per week)
  


• Contract Type: B2B Freelance / Contract
  


• Start date: July
  


• Time Allocation: 40 hours/week