Lead Ontology & Knowledge Engineer (Remote)

Pratt & Whitney is transforming the future of flight and is seeking a Lead Ontology & Knowledge Engineer to enhance their digital workforce. This role involves designing and implementing ontologies and knowledge graphs to support AI agents in performing complex reasoning and decision-making tasks.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain enterprise-grade ontologies (OWL/RDF) that model the complex domain of aerospace engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain
• Define the semantic schema for AI Agents, ensuring they share a common vocabulary when communicating across different business units (e.g., ensuring a "Task" in Engineering means the same thing to an agent in Operations)
• Lead the architecture and deployment of our Enterprise Knowledge Graph
• Build data pipelines (Python) to ingest data from legacy ERP systems, PLM software, and unstructured documents into the graph
• Implement Entity Resolution and linking strategies to unify disparate data points across the organization
• Collaborate with AI Engineers to design "Context Windows" for LLMs. You will determine what graph data needs to be injected into a prompt to maximize agent accuracy
• Work on Causal Inference models: Structure data to help agents distinguish between correlation and causation (e.g., Did the maintenance delay cause the part failure, or did the part failure cause the delay?)
• Establish semantic standards and data governance policies for the AI ecosystem
• Evangelize the use of Knowledge Graphs within Pratt & Whitney, training other developers on graph-based thinking

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Mathematics, or related field with 10+ years of relevant experience; OR a Master's degree with 8+ years of relevant experience; OR a PhD in Computer Science, Information Science, Mathematics, or related field with 5+ years of relevant experience
• Experience: 5+ years in Ontology Engineering, Knowledge Representation, or Data Modeling
• Proficiency in Graph Query Languages (SPARQL, Cypher, Gremlin)
• Strong coding skills in Python (essential for our AI stack)
• Experience with semantic web standards (RDF, OWL, SKOS, SHACL)
• AI Integration: Experience working with LLMs, Vector Databases, and RAG architectures
• U.S. citizenship is required, as only U.S. citizens are authorized to access information under this program/contract
• Domain Knowledge: Experience in manufacturing, aerospace, or complex supply chain environments is a strong plus