Ontologist/Data Scientist
Red Arch Solutions · Reston, VA
$195,000–$230,000from the description
Jul 6, 2026
Reston, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role centers on building standardized, modular metadata frameworks for a Defense Intelligence Agency data modernization program. Day-to-day work involves assessing existing metadata practices across the Intelligence Community, developing controlled vocabularies and semantic models compliant with IC governance standards, and establishing common metadata tags to support automated and machine-learning-driven tagging of large volumes of structured and unstructured data. It suits a seasoned ontologist or data modeler with a strong IC background and an active TS/SCI with polygraph.
Senior level · 10+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $135,107 (middle half $108,024–$176,763). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
The job title is 'Ontologist/Data Scientist' but the primary day-to-day work is ontology, metadata architecture, and semantic modeling for an intelligence community data modernization program — closer to data science/knowledge engineering than pure data pipeline work; 15-2051 was chosen over 15-1243 (Database Architects) because the role centers on semantic models, controlled vocabularies, and ML-enabled tagging rather than database/warehouse architecture.
An active TS/SCI with Polygraph is explicitly stated as mandatory — this is a hard gate.
The posting lists 10+ years of experience in ontology, data modeling, or metadata management within federal/IC environments as a required qualification; this drives the overall years minimum.
RDF, OWL, and SPARQL are listed together as a single semantic web technologies requirement under 'Desired Skills'; they are genuinely interchangeable facets of the same stack, so RDF is the primary skill with OWL and SPARQL as alternatives.
Apache Atlas and Collibra are listed as interchangeable enterprise data catalog tool examples under 'Desired Skills'; emitted as one skill with Collibra as an alternative.
NLP and machine learning appear under 'Desired Skills & Frameworks' as familiarity-level preferences, not hard gates.
No explicit work location is stated, but the client is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), strongly implying an on-site requirement in the Washington DC metro area; remote=false is set accordingly.
The degree requirement accepts 'or a related field' but does not offer an equivalent-experience substitution, so Bachelors is treated as a hard minimum.
Ignored 4 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): ontology development, metadata management, taxonomy development, semantic modeling.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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