Lead SW Architect

We are looking for a Senior Ontologist to lead the design, development, and operationalization of buildings ontologies and taxonomies that power data interoperability, analytics, and intelligent systems across connected buildings products.

This role is hands-on and strategic. You will work at the intersection of domain modeling, semantic technologies, and standards, shaping how complex data is represented, connected, and consumed at scale.

You will collaborate closely with domain experts, data engineers, platform architects, and product teams to ensure that semantic models are accurate, extensible, and aligned with industry standards and real-world operational needs.

Ontology & Semantic Model Development

• Design, build, and maintain industrial ontologies, taxonomies, and knowledge models covering assets, spaces, processes, and operational data.
• Develop and extend models aligned with industry standards such as: 
  • Brick Schema
  • Project Haystack
  • IFC (Industry Foundation Classes)
  • Related building, utilities, energy, or asset-management ontologies
• Define clear concept hierarchies, relationships, constraints, and naming conventions.

Standards & Interoperability

• Map, align, and reconcile concepts across multiple industry schemas and customer-specific models.
• Design semantic alignment strategies between heterogeneous data sources (BMS, IoT, SCADA, CMMS, ERP, digital twins).
• Ensure models support interoperability, extensibility, and backward compatibility.

Applied Semantics & Engineering Collaboration

• Work closely with data engineering and platform teams to: 
  • Operationalize ontologies in production systems
  • Support semantic querying, reasoning, and metadata-driven pipelines
• Define best practices for ontology versioning, governance, and lifecycle management.
• Translate abstract semantic models into practical, implementable artifacts.

Domain Engagement & Leadership

• Provide technical and architecture leadership for ontology streams across connected buildings
• Participate in industrial standard bodies defining buildings ontology
• Review and validate models against operational use cases and data realities.
• Act as a semantic authority and mentor, raising ontology maturity across the organization.

Required Qualifications

Core Expertise

• Deep, hands-on experience in ontology engineering and taxonomy design for industrial or built-environment domains.
• Strong working knowledge of Brick Schema, Project Haystack, and IFC (not just theoretical familiarity).
• Proven experience building real-world, production-grade semantic models.

Technical Skills

• Strong understanding of: 
  • RDF, RDFS, OWL,
  • Knowledge graphs and linked data principles
  • Graph databases like Neo4J
• Experience with ontology tools and platforms 
• Familiarity with semantic querying (e.g., SPARQL, CIPHER) and metadata-driven architectures.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with software and data engineers.
• Understanding of how industrial systems generate, structure, and consume data.
• Experience with digital twins, asset modeling and systems engineering.
• Experience designing ontology governance frameworks at scale.
• Ability to evaluate and integrate open vs proprietary semantic models.
• Prior experience in a platform, product, or enterprise-scale environment.
• Experience working in a fast-paced technology environment focused on delivering a world class products within an agile methodology utilizing latest technology frameworks.