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
• Protégé
• 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
  
 
At SPECTRAFORCE, we are committed to maintaining a workplace that ensures fair compensation and wage transparency in adherence with all applicable state and local laws. This position’s starting pay is: $ 50.00/hr.