Senior Ontologist, Biologics Discovery

About the role

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is looking for a Senior Ontologist for its Biologics Discovery organization. This is a horizontal, cross-cutting role that defines the semantic foundation connecting antibody, protein engineering, assay, automation, sequence, partner and portfolio data. It turns complex scientific language into reusable ontologies, controlled vocabularies, mappings and semantic standards, making biologics data computable, interoperable and AI-ready. The position is based in Beerse, Antwerp, Belgium (no remote option).

Key responsibilities

• Design, build, test, publish and govern ontology modules, controlled vocabularies and mappings for antibody and protein engineering, assay metadata, molecular design, profiling, automation outputs, sequences and developability signals.
• Turn scientific concepts into OWL/RDF classes and properties, SKOS vocabularies, SHACL constraints and reusable design patterns, and set the semantic standards used across the team.
• Partner with data engineers to embed semantic layers in data pipelines, catalogs and knowledge graph platforms, and enable entity linking, classification, normalization, provenance capture and semantic search.
• Build and maintain semantic queries (e.g. SPARQL) and automated validation of coverage, conformance, lineage and completeness.
• Align with enterprise data governance standards and harmonize terminology with peer ontologists supporting CMC, so discovery-to-development handoffs stay traceable.

Required profile

• Advanced degree in Biomedical Informatics, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Data Science, Computer Science or a related field.
• 3+ years in ontology engineering, knowledge modeling, taxonomy design, semantic standards or knowledge graph development.
• Hands-on experience with versioning, change management, validation and release of ontology assets.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills in a matrixed R&D environment.
• Preferred: biologics, antibody design, protein engineering or assay experience; enterprise environment experience; integration of ontologies into data pipelines, search or agentic AI tools; familiarity with OBO Foundry, UMLS, GO, ChEBI, UniProt, HL7/FHIR or CDISC.

Required skills

• Proficiency with OWL, RDF(S), SKOS, SHACL and SPARQL.
• Graph/semantic technologies such as Neo4j, GraphDB, Amazon Neptune, Stardog or Protégé.
• Working knowledge of how ontologies support AI and agentic retrieval (semantic search, RAG, GraphRAG).

What we offer

• Base pay range of EUR 72,500 to EUR 115,230.
• Annual bonus, vacation days, parental leave of at least 12 weeks, bereavement and caregiver leave, well-being reimbursement and health programs.