Data Ontologist - Remote

Rancho Biosciences - Boston, MA

Full-time - Senior

Remote - Boston, MA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

Rancho BioSciences is seeking a Data Ontologist to define, design, and implement metadata and data management and governance solutions for clients in the pharmaceutical, academic, and institutional sectors. The role requires expertise in ontologies, data modeling, and governance principles, along with strong problem-solving skills. The Data Ontologist will collaborate with various stakeholders to ensure effective data management practices and standards are met.

Responsibilities

• Define, design, and deliver ontologies, terminologies, data models, and data standards supporting customer requirements.
• Implement, leverage, and support metadata and data management solutions and best practices.
• Collaborate frequently with research, clinical, and data scientists, data curators, ontologists, solution architects, and database specialists.
• Manage the collection of data from vendors and perform harmonization of incoming vendor data with public/in-house ontologies.
• Communicate strategies, ideas, goals, and progress to the customer and the team.

Requirements

• PhD or MS degree in Life Sciences, Data Science, Computer Science, or equivalent.
• Understanding of data standards, semantics, terminologies, ontologies, and best practices for data governance.
• Familiarity with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data guiding principles is a plus.
• Understanding of and contributions to public biomedical ontologies and standards consortiums (e.g., BioPortal, OLS, MedDRA, MeSH, CDISC, Allotrope) is a plus.
• Familiarity with one or more ontology management solutions - public or commercial.
• Experience with relational databases, NoSQL databases, and general database design.
• Experience with software development life cycle methodologies, unit and integration testing, and documentation development.
• Familiarity with a scripting language such as Perl or Python, Statistical software Packages such as R or SAS, or Relational databases and SQL.
• Familiarity with Semantic Technologies or RDF vocabularies to describe terminological knowledge (such as SKOS, SKOS-XL, Dublin Core, RDFS).

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with the FAIR data guiding principles.
• Understanding of public biomedical ontologies and standards consortiums.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package.