Taxonomist/KM Manager

Job Role : Taxonomist/KM Manager

Duration: 12 months

Location: Hybrid in Austin, TX onsite 4 x weekly

Preferred Qualifications:

* Experience implementing or governing taxonomy/ontology programs in financial services, healthcare, or large-scale enterprise environments

* Familiarity with AI-adjacent knowledge representation - including knowledge graph integration with LLMs, RAG pipelines, or semantic search architectures

* Experience with localization or multilingual taxonomy design across multiple locales

* Exposure to Agile or DevSecOps practices in a data engineering or platform context

* Track record of building taxonomy/ontology programs from greenfield - defining scope, tooling, governance, and stakeholder buy-in

* Experience with authority control, entity resolution, or identity management

Role Description by domains:

Taxonomy & Controlled Vocabulary Design

* Design, build, and maintain enterprise taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and hierarchical classification systems across content and data domains

* Conduct content inventories, gap analyses, and requirements gathering to inform taxonomy structure and scope

* Define vocabulary standards, preferred/alternate terms, broader/narrower relationships, and cross-references aligned with industry standards (ANSI/NISO Z39.19, ISO 25964)

* Develop and enforce metadata schemas and tagging guidelines to support consistent content classification across platforms

* Train stakeholders and content teams in taxonomy application and metadata best practices

Ontology & Knowledge Graph Engineering

* Design and implement ontologies using Semantic Web standards (RDF/RDFS, OWL, SKOS) to model domain knowledge and entity relationships

* Develop and maintain knowledge graphs that integrate taxonomies, ontologies, and instance data to support AI, search, and analytics use cases

* Create, validate, and govern ontology change requests; own ontology tooling requirements and process improvements

* Perform authority control and entity management for organizational entities (people, organizations, products, concepts)

* Apply validation and reasoning standards (SHACL, SPIN) to ensure ontology integrity and consistency

Knowledge Management & Information Architecture

* Define and evolve the organization's knowledge architecture - the structures, systems, and processes that enable knowledge creation, classification, retrieval, and reuse

* Partner with data management, search, product management, ML, and engineering teams to implement standardized vocabularies and semantic models in data consumption experiences

* Map unstructured data to structured semantic models that integrate with data infrastructure and AI/ML pipelines

* Establish metadata standards, modeling guidelines, and data lineage documentation in collaboration with data governance and engineering teams

* Support knowledge organization workshops to align enterprise taxonomy and data models across business units

Governance & Stakeholder Enablement

* Develop and manage taxonomy and ontology governance processes, including change management, review cycles, and versioning

* Perform regular audits of information architecture to maintain compliance and optimize classification performance

* Write process documentation, governance standards, and training materials for taxonomy and metadata programs

* Serve as a cross-functional SME, bridging taxonomy design with data engineering, content strategy, and product teams

* Communicate ontology and taxonomy design decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership

Core Expertise Requirements

* 5-7+ years in taxonomy design ontology engineering, knowledge management, or information architecture

* Demonstrated experience designing and governing enterprise-scale taxonomies and controlled vocabularies

* Proficiency with Semantic Web standards: RDF/RDFS, OWL, SKOS, SPARQL, SHACL

* Experience developing or contributing to knowledge graphs or ontology-backed data models

* Familiarity with metadata schema standards (Dublin Core, Schema.org, BIBFRAME, or domain equivalents)

* Background in data modeling methodologies (conceptual, logical, physical; 3NF, Data Vault, XML Schema)

* Experience with industry ontology frameworks relevant to the domain (e.g., FIBO for financial services, ISO 20022)

Education

* Bachelor's or Master's degree in Library & Information Science, Computer Science, Linguistics, Information Systems, or a related field

* Equivalent professional experience in knowledge engineering or taxonomy management accepted

Proficiency Needed

Tools & Technologies

Ontology & Taxonomy Management

* PoolParty Semantic Suite

* Protege

* TopBraid Composer / TopQuadrant products

* Palantir Foundry

Semantic Web & Data Standards

* RDF / RDFS / OWL / SKOS

* SPARQL, SHACL, SPIN

* Schema.org, Dublin Core, BIBFRAME

* FIBO, ISO 20022 (financial domain)

Data & Engineering (Good to have - not needed per se)

* Python, R, or equivalent scripting

* SQL / GraphQL

* GraphDB or equivalent triplestore

* Git / CI-CD pipelines

* JSON / structured data formats

Content & Knowledge Platforms (Good to have - not needed per se)

* CMS and DAM platforms

* Enterprise knowledge management systems