Air
Knowledge Engineer
Company Description
Air is the leader in Enterprise Readiness. Our mission is to establish readiness as a real-time condition that is continuously achieved. Today, a dangerous Readiness Gap exists between what the front line needs and what is delivered. Our AI-native platform, Air Enterprise Readiness, aligns development, production, delivery, and sustainment into one coordinated execution system for government agencies and industrial suppliers. By revealing true capacity, exposing real constraints, coordinating resources, and executing at the speed of operational demands, the front line gets what it needs to succeed.
Job Description
We are seeking a Knowledge Engineer to join our Data Product & Operations team. In this role, you will build and maintain taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and domain ontologies that bring structure to complex defense acquisition data. Working alongside data engineers and data scientists, domain experts, and product teams, you'll create semantic models that provide structured knowledge to AI systems and enable effective search, classification, and analysis across Air Enterprise Readiness platform.
This role requires systematic analytical thinking, strong communication skills, and a passion for combining theoretical rigor with practical implementation. The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience in taxonomy and ontology development, along with the ability to guide teams in adopting semantic technologies.This role is a full-time position located out of our office in Pittsburgh, PA.
This role may require up to 10% travel
Scope of Responsibilities
- Build and maintain ontologies, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies for defense acquisition domains
- Map unstructured data to structured semantic models that integrate with Air Enterprise Readiness platform data infrastructure
- Establish metadata standards and modeling guidelines in collaboration with data engineering and data science teams
- Partner with product and domain experts to translate business requirements into semantic solutions
- Document semantic models and provide guidance to support team adoption and effective use
- Help drive organization-wide understanding and adoption of semantic technologies and best practices.
- Track adoption and measure impact, continuously refining models, tools, and practices
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
Required Skills:
- Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field
- 3+ years of experience developing ontologies, taxonomies, or knowledge graphs
- Hands-on experience with ontology editors (e.g., Protégé, TopBraid) and graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, RDF stores)
- Working knowledge of semantic web standards (OWL, RDF, SKOS, SPARQL)
- Proven ability to collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders to translate requirements into semantic models
Desired Skills:
- Understanding of how AI/ML and generative AI systems leverage structured knowledge and ontologies
- Active U.S. security clearance or ability to obtain one
- Experience in or exposure to the nuances of a startup or other entrepreneurial environment
- Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field
- Familiarity with defense acquisition data and processes
- Experience with data modeling, schema design, or metadata management
We firmly believe that past performance is the best indicator of future performance. If you thrive while building solutions to complex problems, are a self-starter, and are passionate about making an impact in global security, we’re eager to hear from you.
Air is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans status or any other characteristic protected by law.