Data Engineer II - Ontology Lead

Who We Are

Cross River is a highly profitable, fast-growing financial technology company powering the future of financial services. Our comprehensive suite of innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, and lending products deliver financial services for millions of businesses and consumers around the globe. Cross River is backed by leading investors and serves the world’s most essential fintech and technology companies. Together with its partners, Cross River is reshaping global finance and financial inclusion. 

We are on a mission to build the infrastructure that propels access, inclusion, and the democratization of financial services. While our company has tripled in size over the last three years, our strong sense of purpose led Cross River to be named to American Banker’s list of Best Places to Work in Fintech for the last 6 years. The reason for this success is simple – our nimble and collaborative family culture lives in every member of our growing team. Together we are at the forefront of technology and innovation, and we invite passionate, collaborative, and motivated high performers to join our expanding team.

What We're Looking For

The role of the Data Engineer II - Data Engineer II - Ontology Lead is to develop, implement, and maintain enterprise ontologies in support of Cross River's Data Strategy. 

The Data Engineer II -  Ontology Lead, will be responsible for working collaboratively across Cross River Lines of Business and Functions to develop domain ontologies in support of enterprise initiatives with a focus on BSA/AML related processes, including screening and transaction monitoring. The Data Engineer II -  Ontology Lead will be responsible for partnering with Technology, Compliance, Product, and other Cross River teams to support the development and integration of semantic technology into Cross River products and services. These activities will support the implementation of Palantir Foundry.

The Data Engineer II -  Ontology Lead should be capable of supporting an emerging and evolving semantic program at Cross River, capable of clearly communicating and advocating the value of using semantic technology and knowledge organization concepts.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Define clear and actionable problem statements to help teams deliver results while displaying a comprehensive understanding of ontologies and optimized data models
• Leverage customer insights to influence priorities and roadmap development while advocating for and driving alignment between stakeholders in the development of acceptance criteria
• Own and prioritize the near-term Ontology roadmap for the Palantir implementation to deliver on business outcomes, quickly identifying points of leverage in complex problems or systems, and utilizing data effectively to define success metrics and measurable outcomes
• Utilize balanced judgment in decisions about risks of both actions taken and not taken while innovating on ways to iterate faster in a well-managed way for the immediate team
• Understand and leverage technology and end-state architecture vision in partnership with Technology, Data Science, and other Cross River teams to support the development and integration the ontology support BSA/AML Compliance.
• Deliver value by creating reusable, extensible and resilient capabilities and proactively identify opportunities when key metrics are not performing
• Communicate and advocate the value of Cross River's efforts in ontologies, semantics, and standardization across the business.
• Maintain awareness of competitor and industry developments related to ontology use, knowledge organization, data modeling, and machine learning
• Understand and adhere to W3C standards related to ontologies, in particular RDF, RDFS, OWL, SKOS, and SHACL
• Develop standards, guidelines, and direction for ontology, semantics and Data Standardization in general at Cross River

Role-Based Competencies:

• Able to develop and implement ontologies in consultation with stakeholders in teams dedicated to data management, search, product management, machine learning, and other enterprise initiatives.
• Able to analyze and implement knowledge organization strategies using tools capable of machine learning and semantic enrichment.
• Able to maintain awareness of competitor and industry developments related to ontology use, linked data, semantic technology, graph databases, knowledge organization, and metadata.
• Able to test/troubleshoot new or updated models and systems
• Able to assist in the implementation and support of data standardization and ontology governance strategies and processes.
• Able to develop a strong understanding of the Cross River business, processes, customers, users, and business needs to better solve Data Management problems.
• Able to see and communicate the big picture in an inspiring way. Determines opportunity and risks through comprehensive analysis of current and future trends. 
• Has strong research skills.
• Able to communicate and present ideas clearly and with confidence. Delivers presentations and status updates suited to the characteristics and needs of the audience.
• Able to foster strong relationships with business partners, supporting ontology development across departments. Develops a supportive and helpful culture for assistance in projects and daily support interactions.
• Continually focused on improving the responsiveness and quality of the solutions delivered.
• Exhibits high energy, passion, self-motivation, and creativity for problem solving.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in information science, computer science, engineering, library science, ontology, semantics, or computational linguistics
• At least 4 years’ experience or training in ontology and linked data tools (Palantir, Protégé, TopQuadrant, PoolParty, Stardog, AnzoGraph, Neptune, or Data.World)
• At least 4 years’ experience in a metadata field of work (ontology, taxonomy, semantics, or computational linguistics)
• At least 4 years’ experience or training in using W3C standards including linked and canonical data and ontologies ( JSON, XML, RDF, RDFS, OWL, and SKOS)
• At least 4 years’ experience or training with SQL or SPARQL

Preferred Qualifications:

• Financial Industry experience, especially with compliance and regulatory-related functions.
• Experience implementing Palantir Foundry.
• Understanding of the development of ontologies and the use of controlled vocabularies and thesauri in enhancing the discovery of management of enterprise data
• Familiarity with graph databases and technologies
• Familiarity with Python or R
• Familiarity with JSON, OpenAPI/YAML, AVRO
• Familiarity with Agile principles, processes, and methodologies
• Familiarity with Amazon Web Services
• Detail-oriented and an ability to problem-solve independently
• Strong project management experience
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to present ideas clearly and with confidence.
• Ability to work individually and with a team to meet deadlines

#LI-TP1 #LI-Hybrid #LI-Onsite

Salary Range: $150,000.00 - $180,000.00