Senior Ontologist, Knowledge Graph

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 1 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, Hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The Community You Will Join:

Search is central to Airbnb’s marketplace, linking guests to hosts, listings, and experiences in meaningful ways. The Knowledge Graph team, part of the Search organization, builds the foundational data infrastructure that drives core product experiences like search and discovery.

Ontology and taxonomy are essential to structuring knowledge within the platform. We are seeking a seasoned Senior Ontologist to join our Knowledge Graph team, where you’ll play a critical role in developing and enhancing our knowledge graph infrastructure. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in ontology design and management, paired with experience in dynamic, tech-driven environments.

The Difference You Will Make:

What does being a Senior Ontologist look like:

As a Senior Ontologist on Airbnb’s Knowledge Graph team, you will play a pivotal role in designing and building ontologies from extensive cross-domain data. You will establish and apply best practices in ontology management, metadata, and vocabulary standards, while fostering strong cross-functional relationships to advance knowledge graph construction. Your work will enhance data consistency and significantly reduce data fragmentation across the company.

A Typical Day:

• Support daily operations for semantic data governance across product and knowledge graph use cases.
• Collaborate with Airbnb’s Ontology Manager to create and develop consistent, extensible data models to support Airbnb’s knowledge graph.
• Collaborate with product teams to design comprehensive ontologies/taxonomies that enable intuitive and interpretable knowledge structures for product features.
• Navigate diverse product and data requirements to establish a governance framework, defining a unified taxonomy/ontology across multiple domains.
• Work with cross-functional partners to address data fragmentation issues and standardize semantic data definitions, minimizing data inefficiencies.
• Facilitate communication, collaboration, and alignment among distributed internal stakeholders.
• Advocate for the importance of unified ontologies, standardized metadata, and controlled terminology.

Your Expertise:

• Experience: 5+ years of industry experience working in ontology and/or taxonomy roles with a degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Linguistics, or a related field.
• Ontology and Taxonomy: proven expertise in designing, implementing, and optimizing ontologies, taxonomies, and knowledge representations. Strong understanding of RDF, OWL, SPARQL, and other semantic technologies.
• Knowledge graph: hands-on experience with large-scale knowledge graph development, including schema design, entity modeling, and relationship mapping to support various business domains.
• Data integration: ability to work with multiple data sources, both structured and unstructured, to build cohesive and interoperable ontological models that reduce data silos and enable data discovery and reuse
• Collaboration: skilled at collaborating with data scientists / engineers, software engineers, product managers and domain experts to translate complex business needs into semantic models
• Communication: proven ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise way to a range of technical and non-technical audiences

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: [email protected]. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process.

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

How We'll Take Care of You:

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.

Pay Range$136,000—$160,000 USD