Principal Enterprise Ontology Architect / Engineer

Position Summary

Hands-on Software Engineer - Ontology-Driven, Knowledge Graph, and Agentic Architecture role is critical in defining, governing, and operationalizing an enterprise-scale semantic backbone. The successful candidate will lead the design and deployment of canonical ontologies (including industry standards such as FIBO), knowledge graphs, and ontology-driven agentic systems to enable consistent data meaning, intelligent interaction, and scalable consumption across the firm.

The role works directly with engineering, data, and business stakeholders to elicit domain concepts from structured and unstructured data sources, translate them into robust semantic models, drive ontology-first design, and embed semantics into data platforms (Snowflake / Coretex, Azure SQL, Microsoft Fabric), messaging, AI/ML, and agent platforms. This senior role thrives in a dynamic environment and demands deep technical expertise, strategic vision, and excellent stakeholder collaboration

Essential Duties

• Define and lead the enterprise ontology strategy, including canonical models, taxonomies, FIBO-based financial ontologies, and enterprise knowledge graphs.• Own the full ontology lifecycle using Ontology Life Cycle Management (OLCM) tools, including discovery, modeling, validation, governance, publication, versioning, and controlled evolution.• Architect and implement ontology-driven agentic systems, including agents for data acquisition, semantic enrichment, reasoning, decisioning, and orchestration.• Design and operationalize agents explicitly grounded in ontologies to ensure explainability, reuse, and governed behavior across workflows.• Design ontology-driven data consumption patterns: semantic APIs, query layers, and event streams supporting analytics, operational systems, AI agents, and decision intelligence.• Engineer messaging and event platforms with ontology-aligned schemas, semantic metadata, versioning, discoverability, and reuse.• Integrate semantics across structured and unstructured data, including documents, text, events, and machine-generated data.• Embed semantics into AI/ML, LLM, and Fabric IQ pipelines to enable grounded reasoning, explainability, semantic search, and intelligent automation.• Collaborate across Engineering, Data, and Business domains to align semantics with business needs and technical capabilities.• Serve as an enterprise thought leader shaping technology direction, standards, and reference architectures at the executive level

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree (or advanced degree) in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• Deep expertise in ontologies, semantic modeling, knowledge graphs, and formal representation languages (OWL, RDF, SHACL, SPARQL).
• Hands-on experience with FIBO ontology and financial domain modeling.
• Strong experience with enterprise data architecture, including batch, streaming, real-time, and semantic integration.
• Proven experience working with structured and unstructured data sources at enterprise scale.
• Experience with Snowflake, Azure SQL, and Microsoft Fabric (including Fabric IQ) in semantic and analytics-driven architectures.
• Familiarity with messaging and event-driven architectures, including schema design and semantic versioning.
• Demonstrated experience developing intelligent agents based on ontologies, including reasoning, orchestration, and decision support agents.
• Experience embedding semantics into AI/ML and LLM pipelines, with knowledge of modern AI frameworks and agent runtimes.
• Experience in enterprise-scale software engineering, distributed systems, and cross-domain integration.
• Exposure to knowledge representation tooling, Ontology Life Cycle Management tools, graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, AWS Neptune), and ontology platforms.

Professional Skills Qualifications

• Exceptional ability to interact with business stakeholders, translate domain knowledge into formal ontologies, and drive semantic consensus.• Strategic and analytical thinking to architect long-term, ontology-first solutions aligned to business and technology strategy.• Strong ownership, accountability, and attention to detail in delivering complex semantic and agentic systems.• Creative problem-solving and adaptability in a fast-paced environment.• Excellent teamwork and collaboration skills across distributed teams.• Outstanding communication skills to articulate complex semantic, ontology, and agent concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Desired Qualifications

• Advanced understanding of AI agents, LLMs, decision intelligence, and ontology-grounded reasoning.• Familiarity with enterprise architecture patterns, TOGAF, or similar frameworks.• Knowledge of compliance considerations and GDPR/CCPA for semantic and AI-driven data use.• Experience with cloud platforms and services relevant to semantics and agents, such as Azure Semantic Kernel, Microsoft Fabric, AWS etc.• Catalytic leadership in driving adoption of cutting-edge ontology, knowledge graph, and agentic technologies.

Estimated Compensation:

Base Salary: For CA based position, the base salary range is $225k to $260k. This is an anticipated range only.

Other Compensation: Eligible to be considered for an annual discretionary bonus

Benefits: Eligible for TCW's comprehensive benefits package.

This role requires candidates to work from a TCW office a minimum of four days a week. Flexibility for remote work is offered on one day, depending on business needs.

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