Taxonomist

Description

LAC Federal is seeking a Taxonomist to manage corporate taxonomies (Enterprise Business Vocabularies) and related business and operational processes. The Taxonomist will ensure the quality of the EBV and promote its adoption and effectiveness by collaborating with Economists and other staff to develop and review vocabularies. As a key contributor to the Unit’s overall work program, the candidate will lead or support projects involving taxonomies for various applications. The selected candidate will work with a multi-disciplinary governance group of knowledge management, information science, and other specialists. 

This is a hybrid position.

Responsibilities: 

• Own the design, development and maintenance of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies as part of the EBV, in close collaboration with business subject matter experts (SME) within the organization, with an eye towards continuous improvement and fit-for-purpose. 
• Maintain the roster of taxonomy subject matter experts (SME) and participate in activities to facilitate their ongoing engagement with the EBV and KMU. 
• Translate end user or project team requests into implementable taxonomy updates; liaise with IT staff to ensure the proper implementation of taxonomy changes in the taxonomy management tool; as needed, contribute to business requirements and testing for the taxonomy management tool. 
• Recommend and document metrics to support the taxonomy program – to track taxonomy changes and usage, inform taxonomy enhancements, and communicate results. 
• Apply knowledge of taxonomy modeling standards to projects and initiatives that utilize the EBV, such as metadata design and autocategorization. 
• Support the program lead in developing and implementing strategic roadmaps and play an active role in contributing to operational improvements and program communications. 

Requirements

• Master’s Degree in Library/Information Science, Knowledge Management, Economics, or similar, with at least 4 years of relevant experience, or a bachelor’s degree in a related field with 10 years of experience.
• Background in Library/Information Science, Knowledge Management, Economics, or related fields.
• Experience developing complex taxonomies for both front-end and back-end systems (e.g., information retrieval, knowledge discovery, content navigation).
• Expertise in designing and maintaining taxonomies for SKOS-based systems.
• Ability to translate business needs into technical requirements for EBV.
• Knowledge of integrating taxonomies and ontologies.
• Familiarity with semantic technologies and tools for managing taxonomies and ontologies.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Experience in business process management for taxonomy or ontology development and project management.
• Understanding of how taxonomies benefit Knowledge Management.
• Ability to explain complex taxonomy principles in simple business terms.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills in a multi-functional environment.
• Experience managing workflows related to Knowledge Management, such as taxonomy or content publishing.
• Excellent analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Team player with adaptability, strong negotiation, and influencing skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with semantic frameworks and query languages like RDF, OWL, and SHACL.
• Familiarity with metadata management, autocategorization, machine learning, ontologies, and knowledge graphs.