Senior AI Engineer

Technology Service Corporation; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

ESOP participation

401k Plan

Flexible Work Schedules

Tuition Reimbursement

Co-Sponsored Health Plan

Paid Leave

Job summary

TSC seeks a Senior Ontology Engineer in King George/Dahlgren, VA to design, develop, and maintain ontological frameworks and knowledge graphs for defense mission engineering programs.

The ideal candidate combines formal ontology expertise with hands-on data integration, graph databases, and LLM-enabled AI pipelines. US citizenship and SECRET clearance required; on-site role with competitive compensation and benefits.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Science, Knowledge Engineering, or a related discipline; equivalent experience considered.
• PhD with 2+ years of relevant experience, MA/MS with 5+ years of relevant experience, or BA/BS with 7+ years.
• Hands-on experience with knowledge graph technologies including RDF, SPARQL, SHACL, and OWL for DoD or enterprise use cases.
• Experience with schema design, ontology management, and knowledge graph curation.
• Experience designing and developing end-to-end knowledge graph and AI data pipelines, including integration with LLMs or similar models.
• Familiarity with graph database platforms such as Stardog, Blazegraph, Neo4j, or Amazon Neptune.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a SECRET DoD Clearance.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain formal ontologies using OWL, RDF/RDFS, and SPARQL aligned with DoD mission engineering requirements and semantic interoperability standards.
• Build and deploy knowledge graph solutions that integrate structured and unstructured data sources across heterogeneous, multi-domain defense systems.
• Apply and extend upper-level ontology frameworks, ensuring alignment with DoD and IC data standards.
• Design and implement graph-based AI and semantic solutions, including LLM-integrated pipelines, RAG architectures, and agentic workflows that leverage knowledge graph representations.
• Collaborate with engineers, systems architects, and mission-domain SMEs to translate operational requirements into actionable ontological models and knowledge architectures.
• Support semantic integration and data interoperability efforts across legacy and modern system architectures, including graph database deployments (e.g., Stardog, Neptune, Neo4j).
• Lead the development and writing of technical approaches for proposals related to supporting the Navy adopt AI technologies.

Skills

Ontology engineering

Knowledge graphs

RDF/OWL/SPARQL

Data integration

Graph databases

LLM integration

Technical writing

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

PhD with 2+ years

MA/MS with 5+ years

BA/BS with 7+ years

Equivalent experience considered

Tools

Stardog

Amazon Neptune

Neo4j

Blazegraph

rdflib

owlready2

Job description

TSC is seeking a Senior Ontology Engineer in King George/Dahlgren, Virginia. This position supports the Systems Engineering & Analysis Division (SEA).

Ability to obtain and maintain a SECRET DoD Clearance.

TSC offers a professional working environment, a competitive salary, and an excellent benefits package.

Come and join our team! We are seeking a Senior Ontology Engineer to design, develop, and maintain ontological frameworks and knowledge graph solutions in support of defense mission engineering programs.

The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in formal ontology and semantic web technologies with hands-on experience in data integration, graph database systems, large language models, and knowledge-driven data architecture development. This individual will translate complex, multi-domain mission requirements into scalable knowledge representations and work alongside software engineers, systems engineers, and domain experts to deliver end-to-end solutions.

The ideal candidate has experience in technical writing and will work alongside the business development team to propose innovative solutions to address requests for proposals.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain formal ontologies using OWL, RDF/RDFS, and SPARQL aligned with DoD mission engineering requirements and semantic interoperability standards.
• Build and deploy knowledge graph solutions that integrate structured and unstructured data sources across heterogeneous, multi-domain defense systems.
• Apply and extend upper-level ontology frameworks, ensuring alignment with DoD and IC data standards.
• Design and implement graph-based AI and semantic solutions, including LLM-integrated pipelines, RAG architectures, and agentic workflows that leverage knowledge graph representations.
• Collaborate with engineers, systems architects, and mission-domain SMEs to translate operational requirements into actionable ontological models and knowledge architectures.
• Support semantic integration and data interoperability efforts across legacy and modern system architectures, including graph database deployments (e.g., Stardog, Neptune, Neo4j).
• Lead the development and writing of technical approaches for proposals related to supporting the Navy adopt AI technologies.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Science, Knowledge Engineering, or a related discipline; equivalent experience considered.
• PhD with 2+ years of relevant experience, MA/MS with 5+ years of relevant experience, or BA/BS with 7+ years.
• Hands-on experience with knowledge graph technologies including RDF, SPARQL, SHACL, and OWL for DoD or enterprise use cases.
• Experience with schema design, ontology management, and knowledge graph curation.
• Experience designing and developing end-to-end knowledge graph and AI data pipelines, including integration with LLMs or similar models.
• Familiarity with graph database platforms such as Stardog, Blazegraph, Neo4j, or Amazon Neptune.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a SECRET DoD Clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with U.S. Navy Combat Systems.
• 2+ years of hands-on Python experience, including frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, rdflib, or owlready2, and ETL pipeline tools (e.g., Apache NiFi, Airflow).
• Experience with full-stack web development, including REST API design and development (e.g., FastAPI, Flask, or Node.js), front-end frameworks (e.g., React or Angular), and containerization/deployment tooling (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Practical experience with NLP, semantic search, prompt engineering, and LLMs for enterprise-scale knowledge graph applications including RAG architectures.
• Experience with agentic AI systems and multi-modal model integration applied to knowledge engineering problems.
• Demonstrated team leadership experience, with the ability to guide junior engineers and collaborate across engineering, research, and program management teams.
• PhD in Computer Science, Knowledge Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or a publication record in semantic web and knowledge representation.
• U.S. Citizenship Required for this Position: Yes.

Job Details

Job Type: Regular.

Security Clearance: Secret (ability to obtain required).

Schedule: Full time (40 hr/week).

Travel: 0-10%.

Benefits

• ESOP participation
• 401k Plan
• Flexible Work Schedules
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Co-Sponsored Health Plan
• Paid Leave
• and much more

TSC offers a stable work environment, a competitive salary, and a comprehensive benefit package; including ESOP participation, 401k Plan, Flexible Work Schedules, Tuition Reimbursement, Co-Sponsored Health Plan, Paid Leave and much more.

TSC offers a professional working environment, a competitive salary, and an excellent benefits package.

Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, TSC is an employee-owned company that has been providing high-quality technical services and solutions for our customers' for over 50 years. Our diverse portfolio includes providing; Airborne Sensors and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); Electronic Warfare Systems; Air and Missile Defense; Space Systems, and Intelligence and Information Systems.

Employment at TSC is contingent upon the successful completion of a comprehensive background check, security investigation, and a drug screening. This contractor and subcontractor shall abide by the requirements of 41 CFR 60-1.4(a), 60-300.5(a) and 60-741.5(a). These regulations prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals based on their status as protected veterans or individuals with disabilities, and prohibit discrimination against all individuals based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or for inquiring about, discussing, or disclosing information about compensation. Moreover, these regulations require that covered prime contractors and subcontractors take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.