Global Ontology and Semantic Data Leader

Schneider Electric; Andover (MA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid leave

Flexible working options

Wellness contribution

Employee counseling

Job summary

Schneider Electric is seeking a senior leader to establish and drive a global ontology and semantic data strategy for the Digital Energy software organization. The role blends semantic technology depth with practical engineering to build ontologies used across products, systems, and domains.

You will collaborate with product, architecture, data, AI, and domain teams to deliver models, governance, and reference implementations that unlock interoperability, analytics, and AI-enabled capabilities.

Qualifications

• Significant experience with ontology engineering and semantic technologies.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing semantic models in production environments.
• Strong understanding of RDF, OWL, semantic relationships, and taxonomies.
• Ability to explain ontology concepts and value to software product teams.
• Robust software/data engineering background to implement concepts.

Responsibilities

• Establish and lead global ontology and semantic data strategy for DE Software.
• Define semantic modeling approach, relationships, metadata, classifications, and data tagging.
• Develop practical ontologies for buildings, energy management, automation, and related domains.
• Apply RDF, RDFS, OWL, SHACL, SPARQL, JSON-LD, and knowledge graphs where appropriate.
• Create reusable semantic models for multiple products and teams.
• Translate operational concepts into machine-understandable models with cross-functional partners.
• Identify opportunities to improve interoperability, analytics, and AI capabilities.
• Develop reference implementations and working prototypes to demonstrate value.

Skills

Ontology engineering

Semantic modeling

Knowledge graphs

RDF/OWL

Data governance

Software architecture

Inter-team influence

Technical storytelling

Tools

RDF

OWL

SHACL

SPARQL

JSON-LD

Knowledge graphs

Job description

About The Role

Establish and lead a global ontology and semantic data strategy for the Digital Energy software organization. This role defines how products, systems, devices, points, relationships, behaviors, and operational concepts are represented consistently across the portfolio.

About The Role

Establish and lead a global ontology and semantic data strategy for the Digital Energy software organization. This role defines how products, systems, devices, points, relationships, behaviors, and operational concepts are represented consistently across the portfolio.

This is not a purely theoretical or governance-focused position. The successful candidate will combine deep semantic-technology expertise with the practical engineering ability to build and apply ontologies in real software products.

What You Will Do

• Establish and lead the global ontology and semantic data strategy for DE Software.
• Define a common approach to semantic modeling, entity relationships, metadata, classifications, and data tagging.
• Develop practical ontologies for buildings, energy management, automation systems, and related domains.
• Apply RDF, RDFS, OWL, SHACL, SPARQL, JSON-LD, and knowledge graphs where appropriate.
• Establish processes for ontology development, versioning, validation, extension, and governance.
• Create reusable semantic models that can be adopted across multiple products and engineering teams.
• Translate operational concepts into machine-understandable models with product architects, software teams, data teams, AI teams, and domain experts.
• Identify opportunities to use semantic models to improve interoperability, analytics, search, engineering efficiency, and AI capabilities.
• Partner with the applied AI team to provide structured domain knowledge, grounding, and contextual relationships.
• Develop reference implementations and working prototypes that demonstrate business and technical value.
• Evaluate existing industry ontologies, taxonomies, schemas, and standards before creating proprietary extensions.
• Build a global community of practice around ontology and semantic data.

What Will Help You Succeed

• Significant professional experience with ontology engineering, semantic technologies, knowledge graphs, or closely related disciplines.
• Hands‑on experience designing and implementing semantic models in production or product-oriented environments.
• Strong understanding of RDF, OWL, semantic relationships, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and data classification.
• Experience with data tagging, metadata management, entity modeling, and semantic validation.
• Ability to explain what an ontology is, why it matters, and how it creates value for software products and customers.
• Strong software, data engineering, or technical architecture background.
• Demonstrated ability to influence multiple product and engineering organizations without relying solely on direct authority.
• Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in smart buildings, building management systems, industrial automation, energy management, IoT, or digital twins.
• Experience with Brick Schema, Project Haystack, RealEstateCore, SAREF, BOT, or other relevant industry models.
• Experience integrating semantic models with operational databases, event systems, APIs, analytics platforms, or AI applications.
• Experience applying knowledge graphs or ontologies to retrieval‑augmented generation, AI grounding, reasoning, or agent-based systems.
• Experience leading an enterprise-wide semantic architecture or ontology program.
• Familiarity with graph databases and semantic stores.

Leadership Profile

• Highly articulate and able to create clarity from complex concepts.
• Pragmatic rather than dogmatic.
• Comfortable defining a long‑term strategy while delivering near‑term results.
• A recognized expert who continues to work directly with technology.
• Collaborative across product, architecture, engineering, and business teams.
• Capable of becoming the trusted global authority for ontology within DE Software.

What Success Looks Like

• Publish and align a DE Software ontology strategy.
• Deliver an initial shared semantic model for a priority domain.
• Create an ontology governance and versioning process.
• Achieve adoption by one or more product or platform teams.
• Demonstrate measurable value through an AI, interoperability, engineering, or analytics use case.
• Establish a global ontology community of practice.

Working in the DE Software CTO Office

You will join a highly collaborative, global environment focused on turning emerging technologies into practical software capabilities. These positions require hands‑on contributors who can create working implementations, validate ideas through engineering, and partner effectively across product, architecture, domain, and development teams.

At Schneider, we believe that every employee is a talent who deserves equal opportunities. This means you matter. Every individual needs to feel valued, supported, and treated fairly to do their best work.

Our Total Rewards is our way of saying: “We see you. We value you”. It’s more than just pay and benefits – it’s a meaningful investment in you. It is designed for you to perform, grow, feel safe, and elevate your potential to shine as an impact maker.

Schneider Electric is there when it matters most to you.

Our Total Rewards package outlines all the benefits and support you’ll enjoy as part of the Schneider Electric team:

Care for Yourself and Your Family. We ensure you feel secure with benefits that help you and your family thrive: important insurances, paid leave, parental and care leave, wellness contribution, flexible working options, employee counseling and a Benefits Portal with various deals and discounts.

Invest and Plan Your Future. We help you plan and invest for the future with competitive pay and programs: your base salary, bonus programs, opportunities to own company shares, discounts on company products, referral bonus, pension plans and a digital pension advisory tool.

Grow Your Skills and Career. We commit to helping you grow with ongoing performance and development conversations, global career opportunities, access to our Schneider Career Hub for new positions, projects, and mentors, and learning platforms to equip you with the skills for today and tomorrow.

Team Up in the Workplace. We encourage teaming up through smart ways to collaborate, employee associations, celebrating contributions via a recognition portal, sharing your voice in our engagement survey, and fostering an inclusive, caring workplace.

Support Your Community. We make a difference in your community with volunteer leave, programs through Schneider Electric Foundation, and initiatives that support education.

Looking to make an IMPACT with your career?

When you are thinking about joining a new team, culture matters. At Schneider Electric, our values and behaviors are the foundation for creating a great culture to support business success. We believe that our IMPACT values – Inclusion, Mastery, Purpose, Action, Curiosity, Teamwork – starts with us.

IMPACT is also your invitation to join Schneider Electric where you can contribute to turning sustainability ambition into actions, no matter what role you play. It is a call to connect your career with the ambition of achieving a more resilient, efficient, and sustainable world.

We are looking for IMPACT Makers; exceptional people who turn sustainability ambitions into actions at the intersection of automation, electrification, and digitization. We celebrate IMPACT Makers and believe everyone has the potential to be one.

€40 billion global revenue

+9% organic growth

150 000+ employees in 100+ countries

Schneider Electric aspires to be the most inclusive and caring company in the world, by providing equitable opportunities to everyone, everywhere, and ensuring all employees feel uniquely valued and safe to contribute their best. We mirror the diversity of the communities in which we operate, and ‘inclusion’ is one of our core values. We believe our differences make us stronger as a company and as individuals and we are committed to championing inclusivity in everything we do.

At Schneider Electric, we uphold the highest standards of ethics and compliance, and we believe that trust is a foundational value. Our Trust Charter is our Code of Conduct and demonstrates our commitment to ethics, safety, sustainability, quality and cybersecurity, underpinning every aspect of our business and our willingness to behave and respond respectfully and in good faith to all our stakeholders. You can find out more about our Trust Charter here

Schneider Electric is an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is our policy to provide equal employment and advancement opportunities in the areas of recruiting, hiring, training, transferring, and promoting all qualified individuals regardless of race, religion, color, gender, disability, national origin, ancestry, age, military status, sexual orientation, marital status or any other legally protected characteristic or conduct.