Lead Ontologist — Pharma R&D;

Location: India

Level: Lead / Principal (senior individual contributor with solid influence)

Mandatory Skills : RDF, RDFS, OWL

About the Role

Tech Mahindra is hiring a Lead Ontologist to drive the semantic and knowledge-graph foundations underpinning Pharma R&D;'s FAIR data and AI strategy. This is a hands-on leadership role: you'll set the ontology vision, define standards, mentor others, and partner directly with R&D; scientists, data engineers, and AI/ML teams to make research and CMC/Labs data interoperable, machine-readable, and AI-ready.

You won't just build ontologies — you'll drive the semantic roadmap, influence enterprise architecture decisions, and embed semantic best practice across teams.

What You'll Do

- Own and drive the ontology and knowledge-graph strategy across R&D; - CMC & Labs domains.
- Design, govern, and evolve ontologies, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies using W3C standards.
- Lead integration of LIMS, ELN, CDS, and instrument data into FAIR knowledge graphs.
- Set semantic standards, governance, and versioning; mentor engineers and junior data/semantic practitioners.
- Enable AI/ML and GraphRAG / LLM-plus-knowledge-graph use cases with ontology-backed context.
- Represent client in industry consortia (Allotrope, Pistoia Alliance) and influence external standards.

Mandatory Skills & Experience

- ~10+ years overall in data / information / knowledge engineering , of which 4+ years hands-on building and governing ontologies, taxonomies, or knowledge graphs (we value depth and impact over title longevity).
- Demonstrated Lead/Principal-level ownership — driving a semantic,



knowledge-graph, or enterprise data-modelling initiative end-to-end, including stakeholder influence and mentoring.
- Strong command of semantic-web standards: RDF, RDFS, OWL, SKOS, SHACL, SPARQL .
- Hands-on ontology development with Protégé (or TopBraid / equivalent).
- Practical experience with a triplestore / graph database (Stardog, GraphDB, AWS Neptune, or Neo4j).
- Solid data modelling, metadata management, and master/reference data foundations, with applied FAIR data knowledge.
- Life-sciences / pharma domain data experience (R&D;, drug discovery, CMC, analytical, clinical, or biomedical data) — through ontology work or adjacent roles such as data architecture, cheminformatics/bioinformatics, or scientific data management.
- Proven ability to translate complex science into formal models and to influence and align technical and scientific stakeholders.

Note on background: We welcome candidates who have grown into ontology work from related disciplines — cheminformatics, bioinformatics, taxonomy/library science, data architecture, MDM, or scientific informatics — provided they bring clear, current hands-on semantic delivery.

Preferred Skills

- Familiarity with lab-data standards : Allotrope (AFO/ADF), AnIML, SiLA.
- Knowledge of life-science/chemistry vocabularies: ChEBI, NCIt, UNII, QUDT, InChI/SMILES .
- Python for semantic automation (RDFLib, owlready2, pySHACL).
- Awareness of regulatory & data standards (IDMP, CDISC) and GxP / data integrity .
- Experience embedding ontologies into AI/ML or GraphRAG pipelines.
- Active participation in Allotrope / Pistoia Alliance / W3C standards work

📌 Lead Ontologist (Hyderabad)
🏢 Tech Mahindra
📍 Hyderabad