Data Architect with Ontology Expertise

Job Summary

To support a large financial services firm's enterprise data strategy, a senior Data Architect with Ontology Expertise will engage in a fractional capacity, responsible for defining and implementing ontologies, integrating data governance, and guiding enterprise data architecture while enabling internal teams through knowledge transfer.

Key responsibilities

• Define and implement enterprise ontologies, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies aligned to core business domains
• Connect governance artifacts to semantic models to make governance executable and introduce metadata standards for downstream automation
• Advise on transitioning to a centralized, enterprise-aligned data architecture and provide reference architectures for internal adoption

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in taxonomy, ontology, metadata management, and/or data architecture
• Expertise in ontology design and semantic modeling using frameworks like OWL, RDF, or SKOS
• Experience in developing taxonomies and metadata standards across multiple systems
• Background in financial services or similarly complex environments
• Familiarity with modern data platforms such as Snowflake and emerging knowledge graph architectures