Samba TV

Delivers TV audience measurement and insights

Senior Ontologist - Knowledge Graph & Identity

Data ManagementConfirmed live in the last 24 hours

Full-timeNew York, NY, USA$180k - $230k /yr

About the Job

Requirements

Five to eight years of hands-on experience in ontology engineering, semantic data modeling, or knowledge graph development, with a demonstrable track record of production ontologies at scale.
Deep expertise in W3C semantic web standards, including RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL 1.1, and SHACL, with hands-on experience building and validating graph schemas in a production triplestore such as Amazon Neptune, Stardog, GraphDB, Jena, or equivalent.
Strong Python skills, including production-quality, well-tested code and comfort building data pipelines and graph processing workflows.
First-principles understanding of description logics, ontology design patterns, and practical trade-offs between OWL expressivity and triplestore scalability.
Hands-on experience with entity resolution, record linkage, or deduplication at scale, mapping messy, multi-source real-world data to clean ontological representations.
A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, or a related field is required.
Strong communication skills to defend ontological modeling decisions in design reviews and explain trade-offs to non-specialist stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end design, development, and versioning of Samba TV's core ontologies in RDF/RDFS/OWL, defining entity classes, properties, hierarchies, and constraints that accurately model the data domain at scale.
Author and maintain SHACL shapes for post-load graph validation, consistency checking, and data quality enforcement.
Define and document derived-attribute schemas, including genre affinity, brand affinity, topic affinity, lifecycle signals, and viewing summaries, and own the logical definitions governing how raw events become durable graph attributes.
Establish ontology design standards, change management processes, and versioning practices; evaluate alignment with W3C standards and industry schemas such as Schema.org, EIDR, DDEX, and W3C PROV.
Lead ontology design reviews with product, data engineering, and data science stakeholders, articulating trade-offs between expressivity, scalability, and query performance.
Define aggregation and scoring logic that transforms raw TV viewership and web activity events into durable affinities, summaries, and inferred signals in the graph.
Co-own derivation pipeline design with data engineering by specifying transformation logic, intermediate schemas, and validation checkpoints for Databricks/Spark pipelines that feed the materialized graph substrate.
Determine what belongs in the graph versus what should remain virtualized in the data lake, balancing query performance against storage and refresh cost.
Build and maintain production-quality knowledge graph pipelines in Python and SPARQL that are well-tested, documented, and scalable to Samba's data volumes.
Design and implement entity resolution and record linkage pipelines that map real-world entities, including content titles, devices, audiences, and advertisers, to canonical knowledge graph nodes.
Develop enrichment workflows that integrate third-party data sources, including metadata providers, identity vendors, and web sources, into Samba's knowledge graph in a consistent, governed way.
Apply embedding-based and LLM-augmented approaches to ontology mapping, entity disambiguation, and semantic similarity problems.
Support content and semantic embedding pipelines that feed into the vector store and underpin GraphRAG-based AI solutions.
Partner with data engineering and platform teams to ensure the knowledge graph is integrated, queryable, and production-ready at scale.
Collaborate with product to translate business requirements into ontological and graph data model decisions.
Formally mentor Ontology Engineers and junior data scientists on semantic modeling, SHACL design patterns, and graph best practices.
Lead internal technical talks and workshops on ontology, knowledge graph, and semantic web topics.

Desired Qualifications

A master's degree or PhD is strongly preferred.
Hands-on experience with Amazon Neptune or Stardog, including data virtualization (Neptune Orion or Stardog Virtual Graphs) over data lake sources.
Experience designing aggregation and derivation logic that converts raw behavioral event data into durable, graph-resident derived attributes.
Domain knowledge in media, entertainment, or ad tech, including TV viewership (ACR/STB), digital audience modeling (device graphs, identity resolution), or ad exposure data.
Familiarity with industry content and identity schemas such as EIDR, Schema.org VideoObject, and DDEX, or equivalent.
Experience with embedding models, vector databases such as Milvus, Pinecone, and Weaviate, and GraphRAG architectures such as LangChain/LlamaIndex.
Familiarity with GNN-based approaches to knowledge graph reasoning or entity resolution.
Working knowledge of PySpark and Databricks for large-scale transformation pipelines.

Salary Range: 180000 to 230000 (Currency: USD) (Pay period: per-year-salary)

Samba is a media intelligence company. We know what the world is watching, reading, and thinking about — in real time, at scale, across every screen. Our data exists with the consent of over a billion people, organized into the most complete picture of consumer attention ever built. The biggest brands in the world use that picture to make smarter decisions. We think it’s the most interesting data asset on the planet, because it’s the most culturally relevant.

As Senior Ontologist on Samba TV's Knowledge Graph & Identity team, you will own the design, development, and governance of the semantic data models and ontological frameworks that sit at the foundation of Samba's knowledge graph. You are the domain authority for how Samba represents and relates the entities that matter most to our business - and you ensure that representation is rigorous, scalable, and aligned with industry standards.

This is a hands-on technical role. You will spend the majority of your time designing ontologies, writing SPARQL, building knowledge graph pipelines, and working closely with data engineering and data science peers to put your models into production. You bring enough breadth in ML and AI to leverage embedding-based and LLM-augmented approaches where they strengthen the graph, and you contribute meaningfully to entity resolution and identity linking work that depends on the semantic layer you define.

This role reports to the Data Science Manager, Knowledge Graph & Identity.

What You'll Do:

Ontology Design & Governance

Own the end-to-end design, development, and versioning of Samba TV's core ontologies in RDF/RDFS/OWL - defining entity classes, properties, hierarchies, and constraints that accurately model Samba's data domain at scale

Author and maintain SHACL shapes for post-load graph validation, consistency checking, and data quality enforcement

Define and document derived-attribute schemas - genre affinity, brand affinity, topic affinity, lifecycle signals, and viewing summaries - and own the logical definitions that govern how raw events become durable graph attributes

Establish ontology design standards, change management processes, and versioning practices; evaluate alignment with W3C standards and relevant industry schemas (Schema.org, EIDR, DDEX, W3C PROV)

Lead ontology design reviews with product, data engineering, and data science stakeholders - articulating trade-offs between expressivity, scalability, and query performance clearly

Event-to-Ontology Derivation

Define the aggregation and scoring logic that transforms raw TV viewership and web activity events into the durable affinities, summaries, and inferred signals that live in the graph

Co-own derivation pipeline design with data engineering - specifying transformation logic, intermediate schemas, and validation checkpoints for Databricks/Spark pipelines that feed the materialized graph substrate

Reason carefully about what belongs in the graph vs. what should remain virtualized in the data lake - balancing query performance against storage and refresh cost

Knowledge Graph Development & AI Integration

Build and maintain production-quality knowledge graph pipelines in Python and SPARQL - well-tested, documented, and scalable to Samba's data volumes

Design and implement entity resolution and record linkage pipelines that map real-world entities (content titles, devices, audiences, advertisers) to canonical knowledge graph nodes

Develop enrichment workflows that integrate third-party data sources (metadata providers, identity vendors, web sources) into Samba's knowledge graph in a consistent, governed way

Apply embedding-based and LLM-augmented approaches to ontology mapping, entity disambiguation, and semantic similarity problems

Support content and semantic embedding pipelines that feed into the vector store and underpin GraphRAG-based AI solutions

Cross-functional Collaboration & Mentorship

Partner with data engineering and platform teams to ensure the knowledge graph is integrated, queryable, and production-ready at scale

Collaborate with product to translate business requirements into ontological and graph data model decisions

Formally mentor Ontology Engineers and junior data scientists on semantic modeling, SHACL design patterns, and graph best practices

Lead internal technical talks and workshops on ontology, knowledge graph, and semantic web topics

Who You Are:

Must-Haves

5–8 years of hands-on experience in ontology engineering, semantic data modeling, or knowledge graph development - with a demonstrable track record of production ontologies at scale

Deep expertise in W3C semantic web standards: RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL 1.1, and SHACL - with hands-on experience building and validating graph schemas in a production triplestore (Amazon Neptune, Stardog, GraphDB, Jena, or equivalent)

Strong Python - production-quality, well-tested code; comfortable building data pipelines and graph processing workflows

First-principles understanding of description logics, ontology design patterns, and the practical trade-offs between OWL expressivity and triplestore scalability

Hands-on experience with entity resolution, record linkage, or deduplication at scale - mapping messy, multi-source real-world data to clean ontological representations

Bachelor's degree required in Computer Science, Information Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, or a related field; Master's or PhD strongly preferred

Strong communicator - able to defend ontological modeling decisions in design reviews and explain trade-offs to non-specialist stakeholders

Strongly Preferred

Hands-on experience with Amazon Neptune or Stardog - including data virtualization (Neptune Orion or Stardog Virtual Graphs) over data lake sources

Experience designing aggregation and derivation logic that converts raw behavioral event data into durable, graph-resident derived attributes

Domain knowledge in media, entertainment, or ad tech - TV viewership (ACR/STB), digital audience modeling (device graphs, identity resolution), or ad exposure data

Familiarity with industry content and identity schemas: EIDR, Schema.org VideoObject, DDEX, or equivalent

Experience with embedding models, vector databases (Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate), and GraphRAG architectures (LangChain/LlamaIndex)

Familiarity with GNN-based approaches to knowledge graph reasoning or entity resolution a plus

Working knowledge of PySpark and Databricks for large-scale transformation pipelines

Samba is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We strive to empower connection with one another, reflect the communities we serve, and tackle meaningful projects that make a real impact.

Samba may collect personal information directly from you, as a job applicant, Samba may also receive personal information from third parties, for example, in connection with a background, employment or reference check, in accordance with the applicable law. For further details, please see Samba's Applicant Privacy Policy. For residents of the EU , Samba Inc. is the data controller.

About the Company

Samba TV

Delivers TV audience measurement and insights

Samba TV collects and analyzes TV viewing data to help advertisers, broadcasters, and content creators understand what people watch. It embeds its technology in about 35 million smart TVs across 20 brands, creating a large viewership database and a household identity graph. The system works by using a proprietary multi-source panel from participating TVs to gather viewing activity, then turning that data into insights and analytics that clients can use to plan ads, optimize content, and measure performance. What sets Samba TV apart is the size and scope of its data: it claims the largest end-to-end viewership dataset and identity graph in the industry, with a panel hundreds of times larger than typical measurements and broad brand partnerships, while offering privacy controls for viewers who opt in or out. The company aims to provide data-driven, actionable insights to improve advertising effectiveness and content delivery across the global smart TV market.

Company size: 201-500
Company stage: Debt Financing
Total funding: $75.7M
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2008

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