Senior Enterprise Ontologist

At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities. 

Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive through relentless innovation to exceed our customers’ expectations while making a real impact for our company through our shared purpose. 

When you join our company, we want you to feel valued, supported and proud to work here. That’s why we offer The GEICO Pledge: Great Company, Great Culture, Great Rewards and Great Careers.

We are seeking an experienced and innovative Senior Enterprise Ontologist to lead the design and development of enterprise ontologies, knowledge graphs and semantic models tailored for the insurance domain. You will partner closely with cross-functional teams including engineering, product, AI, and various business teams to identify and analyze data sources, develop taxonomies, and create semantic models that enable effective search, retrieval, and analysis of information. Your expertise in ontology engineering and it’s role in enhancing NLP and AI/ML use cases will be critical in developing cutting-edge solutions that drive innovation, automation and add value to our business. This role will be critical in driving a common understanding and language for the business across all domains. This individual will be part of a team responsible for leveraging semantic platforms and models to accelerate the implementation of context management and agentic AI to address critical business priorities for the data and AI teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, model, and implement formal ontologies to standardize and integrate diverse insurance data, including unstructured documents (e.g., policy contracts, loss reports) and structured core systems data
• Apply best practices in ontology development and management to improve data understanding, data quality and accessibility.
• Establish governance standards for ontology development, ensuring models evolve with the business, i.e. are extensible and auditable for regulatory reporting.
• Conduct requirement gathering with business stakeholders (e.g. underwriters, actuaries, legal/compliance, claims specialists) to translate complex domain knowledge into scalable semantic models and structures.
• Provide training and guidance to stakeholders on ontology usage and best practices for data organization.
• Conduct ontology mapping and integration from source systems to ontological structures, e.g. knowledge graphs to facilitate data interoperability and integration across systems.
• Collaborate with domain teams to define and document enterprise data models in alignment with defined ontologies
• Evaluate ontologies and knowledge graphs created through automated semantic layer tools to ensure accurate representation of business; facilitate modeling of accurate ontologies in these tools
• Partner with data engineering team to outline vision for convergence of enterprise ontologies, enterprise data models and semantic models and layers
• Evaluate and recommend semantic technologies, including graph databases and reasoning engines best suited for handling high-volume, highly interconnected data.
• Partner with AI/ML teams to leverage ontologies and knowledge graphs for advanced use cases including agentic AI context management.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Linguistics, Information Science, or a related field with a focus on knowledge representation.
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in the design, development, and maintenance of large-scale, enterprise-level ontologies.
• Expert knowledge of semantic web standards: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and SPARQL.
• Significant experience with graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Stardog, etc.).
• Proven experience with using ontology development tools.
• Strong programming skills in languages for data manipulation, e.g. SQL, Cipher, Python, Scala, Java.
• Experience supporting AI/ML, advanced analytics, and real-time data applications.
• Experience with generative AI models, prompt engineering and parameter tuning
• Strong understanding of data lineage and governance standards in a regulated industry
• Strong familiarity with governance and compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, NYDFS requirements etc.).
• Excellent communication skills, capable of translating the value of semantic technology to business and technology leaders.

Preferred Skills

• Significant experience in the insurance or financial services industry is highly preferred.
• Familiarity with industry-specific data models or ontologies (e.g., ACORD standards, Financial Industry Business Ontology – FIBO, Financial Regulation Ontology – FRO).
• Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for interrogating unstructured documents and Text-to-SQL.
• Strong understanding of data modeling (conceptual, logical, physical), relational and non-relational databases.
• Knowledge of designing data pipelines using ETL/ELT tools (e.g., Apache Airflow, dbt).
• Knowledge of cloud architecture, APIs, and event-driven data systems (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub).

Annual Salary

The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/ annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate’s work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.

The GEICO Pledge:

Great Company: At GEICO, we help our customers through life’s twists and turns. Our mission is to protect people when they need it most and we’re constantly evolving to stay ahead of their needs.

We’re an iconic brand that thrives on innovation, exceeding our customers’ expectations and enabling our collective success. From day one, you’ll take on exciting challenges that help you grow and collaborate with dynamic teams who want to make a positive impact on people’s lives.

Great Careers: We offer a career where you can learn, grow, and thrive through personalized development programs, created with your career – and your potential – in mind.  You’ll have access to industry leading training, certification assistance, career mentorship and coaching with supportive leaders at all levels.

Great Culture: We foster an inclusive culture of shared success, rooted in integrity, a bias for action and a winning mindset. Grounded by our core values, we have an an established culture of caring, inclusion, and belonging, that values different perspectives. Our teams are led by dynamic, multi-faceted teams led by supportive leaders, driven by performance excellence and unified under a shared purpose.

As part of our culture, we also offer employee engagement and recognition programs that reward the positive impact our work makes on the lives of our customers.

Great Rewards: We offer compensation and benefits built to enhance your physical well-being, mental and emotional health and financial future.

• Comprehensive Total Rewards program that offers personalized coverage tailor-made for you and your family’s overall well-being.
• Financial benefits including market-competitive compensation; a 401K savings plan vested from day one that offers a 6% match; performance and recognition-based incentives; and tuition assistance.
• Access to additional benefits like mental healthcare as well as fertility and adoption assistance.
• Supports flexibility- We provide workplace flexibility as well as our GEICO Flex program, which offers the ability to work from anywhere in the US for up to four weeks per year.

The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. GEICO hires and promotes individuals solely on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled.

GEICO reasonably accommodates qualified individuals with disabilities to enable them to receive equal employment opportunity and/or perform the essential functions of the job, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship to the Company. This applies to all applicants and associates. GEICO also provides a work environment in which each associate is able to be productive and work to the best of their ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment. We expect and require the cooperation of all associates in maintaining an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment with mutual respect by and for all associates and applicants.