Ontologist (Knowledge Engineer) - Remote (Information Technology)

SUMMARY 

The Ontologist will assist in leading the California Department of Public Health's (CDPH) data policy efforts for state and local public health. For this role, CDPH is looking for passionate, hard-working, and talented individual who have experience analyzing content management systems and can make independent, complex decisions in ontology and knowledge management, while driving excellence and innovation. In this role, the Ontologist will be responsible for assisting the Center for Health Statistics and Informatics (CHSI) in the development, implementation, and management of public health policies related to health data specific terminologies (entities, attributes, and their relationship). 

Key responsibilities include designing ontology models to represent various entities, attributes and their relationships, ensuring that terminologies and ontologies provide adequate domain coverage and are compatible with relevant Information standards, working with public health program experts and scientists; coordination with professional staff from other state, local, or federal agencies; developing high-quality technical documentation about terminologies and ontologies, including detailed descriptions of the terminology content and its associated models and processes. The incumbent will apply appropriate methods including definition of the nature and scope of the problem; development of hypotheses for study, design, execution of experiments; analysis and interpretation of findings; and documentation and appropriate dissemination of results to the public and other public health professionals.

The Ontologist will also be expected to exercise creativity, imagination, and critical judgment in recognizing and selecting appropriate public health problems, for which there is incomplete scientific information, for study or investigation, in selecting or devising appropriate methods for study, investigation, and analysis, and in interpreting results to achieve maximum understanding and the protection of public health. 

The Ontologist will need to be comfortable in an environment that has difficult, complex, and unanticipated problems in unexplored areas of public health that have statewide sensitivity and policy impact. They will serve as a scientific advisor or consultant to other staff, including the CHSI Public Health Medical Officer.

The Ontologist will consult with department management and others in areas appropriate to their qualifications and participate in the development of public health policy; provide consultation to departmental management and others as requested; make presentations to State public health experts and the community. 

Must be able to work flexible hours, including weekends and holidays.

Salary range:  $133,000 to $151,560 annually depending on experience/ qualifications

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS 

35% Developing Data Criteria

• Help lead CDPH's data standardization efforts for state and local public health.
• Evaluate impact of federal data standards on CDPH programs.
• Provide input into CDPH's data governance and overall data strategy.
• Design and implement data ontologies to fit various use cases and provide expertise around knowledge structures. Specifying mappings between different ontologies. Designing tools for ontology exploration.
• Assisting with data QA and preparation. Lead and participate in ontology creation, ontology management and semantic enrichment efforts. Curating, organizing, and classifying data with appropriate ontologies. Connecting to other knowledge representation groups within CDPH for data integration and sharing best practices. Representing CDPH in ontology communities.
• Leading, directing and reviewing technical activities associated with delivering and managing knowledge systems and tools, including knowledge repositories, CDPH intranet and library resources. Facilitate insights discovery, search, knowledge management and information governance. 
• Develop the framework for understanding what problems to solve- takes the outcomes of analytics findings and combines it with information from inside and outside the company to answer a question.
• Consume the results of advanced analytics into knowledge graphs and ontologies and produce real answers to public health questions. Transform resources into useful metrics. Apply ontological findings to improvement of current public health practices, including COVID-19 surveillance and prevention.

30% Developing Schemata for Data

• Research sources of data relevant to public health needs and establish hierarchical structures, classifications, and divisions of data sources through a public health and social determinants of health lens.
• Develop metadata schemas to optimize findability and searches. Design navigation (the way we move from one piece of information to another) and present content so that users can find important sites and information.
• Develop local taxonomies (controlled vocabularies).
• Determine how information will be targeted to specific audiences.
• Assist in the development and configuration of site collections including permissions, custom lists, surveys, templates, and document/image libraries.
• Devise and implement processes to validate data in a semantic context and develop metrics and procedures for assessing, managing, and characterizing datasets.
• Lead data management strategy design.

30% Developing and Deploying Protocols for Data

• Implement ontologies and knowledge documents to achieve rich data representation, enhanced metadata management and promote linked data. Creating and updating best-in-class documentation for the knowledge management team. Translate technical knowledge into specific troubleshooting steps for support team use.
• Support site owners, end users and other content managers to ensure they have the training, materials, and support for utilizing the functionality of the SharePoint environment.
• Coordinate the functional and user testing of sites. Understand and apply security rules and requirements. Develop processes and procedures to integrate taxonomies into the knowledge graph environment.
• Participate in collaborating with CDPH programs and local health departments to develop standards and best practices for current public health issues, including COVID-19 surveillance and prevention.
• Participate in relevant industry and governance groups.
• Effectively retain, retrieve, and protect information

NON-ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• 5% other duties as assigned

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor‘s degree with 2-5 years of experience in taxonomy or ontology development, required. Possession of a master's degree OR 2-4 years of equivalent professional experience doing senior-level taxonomy or ontology work, required.
• Experience with relevant ontology development tools and industry standard knowledge graph database tooling standards (RDFS/SHACL/OWL/SKOS/SPARQL)
• Experience using and or developing semantic models
• Experience managing, organizing, and classifying data and developing ontologies and semantic data architecture and helping promote linked data 
• Possesses strong technical writing skills
• Able to elicit requirements from both program (business) and IT objectives and needs
• Fluency in critical thinking, structured analysis, and problem solving
• Excellent listening, written and oral communication skills; skillful facilitator
• Good collaboration, relationship‐building, and customer support skills
•  Good business process re‐engineering and project management skills 

 Education/Experience

• Bachelor's degree in information science, computer science, library science, computational science, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, or related discipline AND 2-5 years of experience in taxonomy or ontology development, required.
• Graduate degree in information science, computer science, library science, linguistics, computational science, mathematics, philosophy, information management, or other related discipline, OR 2-4 years of equivalent professional experience doing senior-level taxonomy or ontology work may be substituted for graduate degree, required.

Certificates/Licenses

• N/A

Other Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities

• Familiarity with Microsoft Office software, including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint
• Ability to effectively communicate verbally and in writing
• Ability to work independently and adapt to varied work settings
• Ability to work effectively with a team of diverse individuals
• Ability to multi-task and work effectively under pressure
• Requires use of computing devices and phones, frequent face-to-face/e-meeting (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex) contact with management, staff, consultants and the public, verbal, written and digital (e-mail) communication, extensive review, analysis and preparation of electronic and written documents, assessment of practical demonstrations

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• Stand: Frequently
• Walk: Frequently
• Sit: Frequently
• Handling / Fingering: Occasionally
• Reach Outward: Occasionally
• Reach Above Shoulder: Occasionally
• Climb, Crawl, Kneel, Bend: Occasionally
• Lift / Carry: Occasionally - Up to 25 lbs.
• See (Vision): Constantly
• Taste/ Smell: Not Applicable 

Key

• Not Applicable = Not required for essential functions
• Occasionally = (0 - 2 hrs/day)
• Frequently = (2+ - 5 hrs/day)
• Constantly = (5+ hrs/day)

WORK ENVIRONMENT

Remote. Must have functioning internet access when working from locations other than the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Richmond.

EEOC STATEMENT

It is the policy of Heluna Health to provide equal employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)

See job description

Salary Minimum: 133000Salary Maximum: 133000