Senior Ontologist, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Info, Web & Knowledge Services

Amazon’s AGI Information is seeking an exceptional Senior Ontologist to drive ontology advancements. The team is innovating to optimize knowledge graph ontology for LLM understanding.<br/><br/>We're looking for a Sr Ontologist to join us in sunny Santa Barbara and help us build this future. As a member of the team, you will have the opportunity to work on interesting cutting edge problems with immediate customer impact. Your initial focus will be on developing LLM friendly ontologies and you will have the opportunity to work with product managers, engineers, and scientists to develop tools to help on this endeavor. <br/><br/>A successful candidate has a strong background with building knowledge systems to deliver world-class, intuitive, and comprehensive taxonomy and ontology models, a proven track record of innovation to adapt to the new work of LLM, and experience with leading a team of ontologists.<br/><br/>As a Senior Ontologist, you will leverage your technical expertise and experience to demonstrate leadership in modeling large complex knowledge systems. <br/><br/>Your first responsibility will be to structure a team of ontologists to deliver LLM friendly ontology for tens of verticals to feed the Amazon Knowledge Graph with trustworthy, live-updating, high-quality, and accurate structured information about all entities and data of interest to our customers. You will define roadmaps and goals to make progress incrementally and you will insist on delivering results leading by example.<br/><br/><br/>Key job responsibilities<br/>- Develop logical, semantically rich, and extensible data models for Amazon's extensive product catalog<br/>- Ensure our ontologies provide comprehensive domain coverage that are available for both human and machine ingestion and inference<br/>- Create new schema using Generative Artificial Intelligence (generative AI) models<br/>- Analyze website metrics and product discovery behaviors to make data-driven decisions on optimizing our knowledge graph data models globally<br/>- Expand and refine the expansion of data retrieval techniques to utilize our extensive knowledge graph<br/>- Contribute to team goal setting and future state vision<br/>- Drive and coordinate cross-functional projects with a broad range of merchandisers, engineers, designers, and other groups that may include architecting new data solutions<br/>- Develop team operational excellence programs, data quality initiatives and process simplifications<br/>- Evangelize ontology and semantic technologies within and across teams at Amazon<br/>- Mentor and influence peers<h3>Basic Qualifications</h3><br/>* Degree in Library Science, Information Systems, Linguistics or equivalent professional experience<br/>* 5+ years of relevant work experience working in ontology and/or taxonomy roles<br>* Proven skills in data retrieval and data research techniques<br/>* Ability to quickly understand complex processes and communicate them in simple language<br/>* Experience creating and communicating technical requirements to engineering teams<br/>* Ability to communicate to senior leadership <br/>* Experience with generative AI (e.g. creating prompts)<br/>* Knowledge of Semantic Web technologies (RDF/s, OWL), query languages (SPARQL) and validation/reasoning standards (SHACL, SPIN)<br/>* Knowledge of open-source and commercial ontology engineering editors (e.g. Protege, TopQuadrant products, PoolParty)<br/>* Detail-oriented problem solver who is able to work in fast-changing environment and manage ambiguity<br/>* Proven track record of strong communication and interpersonal skills<br/>* Proficient English language skills<br/><h3>Preferred Qualifications</h3>* Master’s degree in Library Science, Information Systems, Linguistics or other relevant fields<br/>* Experience building ontologies in the knowledge retrieving space<br>* Experience working with schema-level constructs (e.g. higher-level classes, punning, property inheritance)<br/>* Proficiency in SQL, Open Cypher<br/>* Familiarity with software engineering life cycle<br/>* Familiarity with ontology manipulation programming libraries<br/>* Exposure to data science and/or machine learning, including graph embedding<br/><br/>Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.<br/><br/>Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with som