Product Ontology Designer

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:1.8;"><b>Overview</b></p><p style="line-height:1.8;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:1.8;">GEP is a global leader in procurement and supply chain transformation. We help enterprises harness the power of AI and digital technology to stay ahead in the new economy. Through AI-driven solutions, we enable businesses to operate with greater efficiency and effectiveness, gain a competitive advantage, and maximize business and shareholder value.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">We partner with Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises across industries to build high-performing, resilient and sustainable supply chains.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">We’re always looking for talented people who can help us grow, continually improve and make a difference. At GEP, we’re building a beautiful company, enjoying the journey and creating lasting impact for our clients, our communities and one another.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:1.8;"><b>What You Will Do</b></p><p style="line-height:1.8;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:1.8;">We're building GEP's Distributed Intelligent Data Layer, a semantic platform for procurement running on custom technical stack.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">We're looking for a Product Ontology Designer who will define the product and procurement ontology that everything else is built on: the classes, relationships, taxonomies and rules that model products, categories, suppliers and spend.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">You'll translate procurement domain knowledge into rigorous RDF/OWL models, validate them against both query surfaces (SPARQL and Cypher), align them to industry standards, and set the governance that keeps the ontology consistent as it scales across tenants.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><ul style="margin-top:0in;" type="disc"> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Design the product/procurement ontology: </b>Model classes, properties, relationships and taxonomies for products, categories, suppliers and spend using RDF, OWL and SKOS.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Author validation & inference rules: </b>Define SHACL constraints and reasoning rules that keep data correct and enable inference (later materialized via OWL-RL).<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Align to standards: </b>Map and reconcile against procurement standards and client schemes (UNSPSC, eClass, GS1), resolving overlaps and gaps.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Ground the model in real data: </b>Partner with domain SMEs and data engineers to validate the ontology against real catalog and spend data and query patterns, on both SPARQL and Cypher.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Own governance: </b>Establish versioning, change control, naming conventions and documentation so the ontology stays coherent as it grows.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Enable the annotators: </b>Write and maintain the data-cleaning and annotation guidelines that annotators apply when mapping records and relationships to the ontology, and adjudicate the hard classification cases.<p></p></li> </ul><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:1.8;"><b>What You Should Bring</b></p><p style="line-height:1.8;"></p><ul style="margin-top:0in;" type="disc"> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;line-height:1.8;"><b>Education: </b>Degree in Computer Science, Information/Library Science, Linguistics, or a related field (advanced degree a plus).<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Experience: </b>3+ years building ontologies, taxonomies or knowledge models in production, ideally over product, catalog or master data. Equivalent domains are welcome; we care about the modeling skill.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><b>Core technical skills:</b><p></p><ul style="margin-top:0in;" type="circle"> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;">Ontology and taxonomy modeling: RDF, OWL and SKOS.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;">Constraints and reasoning: SHACL, and familiarity with rule-based inference (OWL-RL / SWRL).<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;">Ontology tooling: Protégé, TopBraid, PoolParty or comparable.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;">SPARQL (and ideally Cypher/openCypher) for validating and querying models against real data.<p></p></li> <li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;">Domain grounding in procurement, product catalog, spend classification or master data, or the ability to ramp on it quickly.</li></ul></li></ul><p style="margin-left:0in;"></p><p></p><ul type="disc" style="margin-top:0in;"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><span style="font-weight:bolder;">Mindset: </span>Rigor, conceptual clarity, and a drive to build a model that stays clean under real-world messiness.</li></ul><ul type="disc" style="margin-top:0in;"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;"><span style="font-weight:bolder;">Collaboration: </span>Strong communication skills and comfort translating between domain SMEs and engineers in a hybrid, agile team.<p></p></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Nice to have (any of these makes you stand out):</b></p><ul><li><span style="font-weight:bolder;"><span style="margin:0px;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="margin:0px;font-weight:400;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);">Procurement / product standards: UNSPSC, eClass, GS1.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-weight:bolder;"><span style="margin:0px;font-weight:400;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);"><span style="margin:0px;color:rgb(42,51,62);font-variant:normal;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="margin:0px;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;">Entity resolution and data-quality practices.</span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-weight:bolder;"><span style="margin:0px;font-weight:400;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);"><span style="margin:0px;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;"><span style="margin:0px;color:rgb(42,51,62);font-variant:normal;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:7pt;line-height:normal;font-family:'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="margin:0px;text-indent:-17.3333px;font-size:10.5pt;">Working with Oxigraph, Apache AGE, or comparable triple stores (Apache Jena, GraphDB) directly.</span></span></span></span></li><li>Defining data-cleaning / annotation guidelines and working with data curators.</li></ul><p><br /></p><p><b>This is a hybrid role with 3 days on-site in GEP’s Clark, NJ Headquarters.</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Salary Range: </b>$125,000 – $170,000 annually, based on experience and qualifications.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b> <br /> </b></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Additional Compensation: </b>Eligible for a performance-based bonus tied to individual and company performance.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin:0in 0in 4pt 0.25in;text-indent:-13pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Benefits: </b>Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) with a 3% company match, paid time off, company holidays, and professional development opportunities.</p><p></p><p></p>