Ontology

Come be a part of a rapidly expanding $35 billion-dollar global business. At Amazon Business, a fast-growing startup passionate about building solutions, we set out every day to innovate and disrupt the status quo. We stand at the intersection of tech & retail in the B2B space developing innovative purchasing and procurement solutions to help businesses and organizations thrive. At Amazon Business, we strive to be the most recognized and preferred strategic partner for smart business buying. Bring your insight, imagination and a healthy disregard for the impossible. Join us in building and celebrating the value of Amazon Business to buyers and sellers of all sizes and industries. Unlock your career potential.The vision of Amazon Business Catalog Taxonomy Team (ABCT) is to empower large enterprise customers to manage, audit and plan their spend by providing them tools based on a collection of standardized, semantically rich, extensible and universally applicable product taxonomies. In the B2B e-commerce space, customers are particularly interested in using externally developed and industry standard taxonomies for product categorizations in order to manage and plan their inventory. Amazon Business’s vision is to support a diverse pool of taxonomy-based product categorizations so that it serves as the premier destination for these customers.As an Ontologist, you will work on a global team of knowledge builders to help us consistently interpret these taxonomies (like UNSPSC, E-Class, etc.) and create a unified taxonomy to help translate product categorizations across taxonomies to meet the diverse needs of customers in the B2B space. Moreover, you will help create crisp guidelines on how to categorize products using a combination of human in the loop systems. You will also be responsible for driving the opinion on how to evolve these taxonomies to meet the growing needs of our customers.Key job responsibilities* Help to consistently interpret the intent behind industry standard taxonomies like UNSPSC, E-Class, etc.* Develop logical, semantically rich, and extensible data models for Amazon's expansive product catalog to seamlessly categorize products across multiple taxonomies, while expanding the canonical taxonomy to meet the evolving needs of our customers.* Research worldwide understanding of Amazon products to develop scalable data models that solve customer problems and enhance product discoverability * Expand existing data retrieval techniques by utilizing our extensive product catalog and query languages* Analyze website metrics and product discovery behaviors to make data-driven decisions on optimizing our knowledge graph data models globally* Contribute to the development of new tool features and processes for the Ontology team* Drive alignment to ontology modeling and technology best practices and principles within our organization and across Amazon* Coordinate cross-functional projects with a broad range of technical and non-technical teamsAbout the teamOur team has a global presence and we celebrate diverse cultures and backgrounds within our team and our customer base. We are committed to fostering our culture of inclusion, offering continuous access to internal affinity groups as well as highlighting diversity programs. We care about your career growth, to continuously support throughout your entire career at Amazon. We recognize each team member as an individual, and we will build on your skills to help you grow. We have a broad mix of experience levels and tenures, and we are building an environment that celebrates knowledge sharing.* Degree in Library Science, Information Systems, Linguistics or equivalent professional experience * 3+ years of relevant work experience working in ontology and/or taxonomy roles * Experience with data retrieval and data research techniques * Knowledge of Semantic Web technologies (RDF/s, OWL), query languages (SPARQL) and validation/reasoning standards (SHACL, SPIN) * Knowledge of open-source and commercial ontology engineering editors (e.g. Protege, TopQuadrant products, PoolParty) * Master’s degree in Library Science, Information Systems, Linguistics or other relevant fields * Ability to communicate knowledge-based requirements and needs to engineering and retail teams * Detail-oriented problem-solving, ability to work in fast-changing environment and manage ambiguity * Experience building and unifying diverse ontologies in the growing e-commerce businesses.* Experience working with schema-level constructs (e.g. higher-order classes, punning, property inheritance) * Proficiency in SQL, SPARQL * Familiarity with software engineering life cycle.* Familiarity with ontology manipulation programming libraries.Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $74,400/year in our lowest geographic market up to $166,500/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.