2026 PhD Graduate - Ontologist - Threat Analytic Systems

About the Role

We are seeking an ontologist to join our team at APL. As a member of our team, you'll contribute to ontologies in a variety of domains. You will be joining a hardworking team of engineers and scientists who craft and implement novel methods for solving meaningful national security challenges. We are passionate about applying knowledge representation techniques to draw insights from and enable computational analysis of large sets of structured and unstructured data.

Responsibilities

• Build ontologies
• Engage stakeholders to determine ontology requirements
• Work with subject matter experts to craft ontology content
• Contribute to quality assurance and validation practices

Qualifications

• Possess a PhD degree in a field related to Applied Ontology (e.g. Philosophy, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Logic, or Linguistics)
• Proficient with Web Ontology Language (OWL2), Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFs), and Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• Proficient with SPARQL
• Proven track record of conducting independent research within the field of ontology and knowledge representation
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, and the ability to work with a wide range of collaborators
• Experience building domain ontologies
• Proficient with ontology editors (e.g., TopBraid Composer, Protégé)
• Experience with formal representations of logical reasoning and inference
• Experience eliciting, defining, and communicating modeling requirements for domain before crafting ontologies that meet those requirements
• Experience with multi- or intra-disciplinary collaboration
• Ability to obtain a Top Secret security clearance. If selected, you will be subject to a government security clearance investigation and must meet the requirements for access to classified information. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship.

Preferred Qualifications

• A Doctorate degree in a field related to Applied Ontology (e.g. Philosophy, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Logic, or Linguistics)
• Experience working with a software engineering team to deliver ontology-driven software features
• Experience building domain ontologies based on a top-level ontology
• Comfort with weighing tradeoffs between semantic expressivity and project-specific implementation strategies
• Experience with any of the following: Basic Formal Ontology (BFO); The Common Core Ontologies (CCO); W3C standards such as SOSA/SSN and the Time Ontology; ontologies in the Open Biological and Biomedical (OBO) Foundry; as well as other semantic web standards, such as Dublin Core, SKOS, QUDT, and GeoSPARQL
• Experience with triple stores or graph databases (e.g., GraphDB, Stardog, Jena Fuseki)
• Experience with semantic software packages and frameworks (e.g., Jena, Sesame, RDF4J, RDFLib)
• Experience with semantic validation languages (e.g. SHACL, SPIN)
• Experience with software version management using GIT
• Experience with Python
• Experience applying ontologies in natural language processing, image processing, or in the normalization/integration of heterogeneous data sources
• Coursework in data structures, databases, metaphysics, knowledge representation, algorithms, mathematical logic, mereotopology, or software programming

Pay

Minimum Rate $105,000 Annually — Maximum Rate $245,000 Annually