As an Ontologist at AstraZeneca, you will playa central rolein making enterprise-wide Medicaldata ready for advanced analytics and AI by designing, building, and evolving the semantic layer that connects and contextualises information across the organisation. Working closely with Medical, Data, Digital, and technical teams, you will develop ontologies, knowledgegraphs,andAZsemantic standards that enable consistent interpretation, integration, and reuse of complex medical data at scale. This role will help transform fragmented data into a structured, interoperable foundation that supports insight generation, data-driven decision-making, and innovative AI applications, while promoting data quality, consistency, and governance across markets and therapeutic areas

• Medical-commercial ontology design and development:Design and develop ontologies spanning HCPs, KOLs, accounts, patient journeys, indications, brands, campaigns, channels, scientific platforms, congress activities, and evidence tiers — supporting consistent segmentation, targeting, scientific engagement tracking, and performance measurement across markets.

• Medical-commercial engagement modelling:Create and maintain ontological patterns for MSL interactions, KOL engagement, medical content tagging, claim–reference linking, consent, preferences, touchpoints, and next-best-action — enabling personalised scientific and promotional engagement, attribution modelling, MLR/PRC workflow support, and integrated medical-commercial reporting.

• Standards, interoperability, and compliance:Apply external vocabularies and identifiers (e.g., NPI, OneKey, SNOMED CT, ATC,RxNorm, MedDRA,MeSH) within ontology models, and incorporate privacy, consent, and regulatory semantics to support GDPR, CCPA, ABPI Code, EFPIA Code, and global policy requirements.

• Collaboration and stakeholder engagement:Work closely with Medical Affairs, MSL teams, brand teams, analytics, Martech, architecture, governance/assurance, and data engineering to gather requirements, validateontology designs, curate terminology, and support adoption across business users and consumers.

• Governance and lifecycle support:Contribute to ontology versioning, change management, lineage documentation, and quality assurance processes — ensuring models remainaccurate, consistent, and aligned to enterprise standards.

Essential for the role

• EducationBachelor'sorMaster's degree in Information Science, Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Data Science, Life Sciences, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.

• ExperienceDemonstrable experience in ontology development, taxonomy design, or semantic data modelling, with evidence of contributing to or leading deliverables within a team setting.

• SemanticexpertiseExperience developing ontologies, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, or knowledge graphs within a structured delivery environment.

• Semantic technologiesWorkingknowledge of RDF, OWL, SKOS, SPARQL, and graph-based knowledge representation.

• Data interoperability Experience using semantic models to integrate and standardise data across multiple systems and sources.

• Stakeholder engagement Ability to work across multiple stakeholder groups including architecture teams, business users/consumers, and governance/assurance functions.

• Domain knowledge:Understanding of pharmaceutical, clinical, scientific, or healthcare data domains — particularly where medical and commercial data intersect.

• Governance and standards:Experience applying data standards, controlled terminology, and governance practices to improve consistency and reuse.

• Communication:Ability to translate business needs into clear semantic solutions and explain ontology concepts to non-technical audiences.

• Ways of working:Experience working within multidisciplinary teams in agile or iterative delivery environments.

Desirable to have

• Industry experience:Experience working in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences environments across medical and/or commercial functions.

• Tools:Familiarity with platforms such as Protégé, TopBraid,Metaphactory,PoolParty,Stardog, Neo4j, Veeva Vault/CRM metadata, Informatica, or Collibra.

• Standards:Exposure to terminologies such as SNOMED CT, MedDRA, LOINC, ICD, MeSH, ATC, WHO-DD, or CDISC.

• AI and analytics:Understanding of how ontologies and semantic layers support analytics, search, and AI use cases.

• Data architecture:Familiarity with enterprise data platforms, metadata management, and data architecture principles.

What we offer:

Welcome to Warsaw Site, one of over 400 sites here at AstraZeneca, providing a collaborative environment where everyone feels comfortable and able to be themselves is at the core of AstraZeneca’s priorities, it’s important to us that you bring your full self to work every day.

To help you maintain your best self, here’s a sneak peek into some of the things this site provides for you:

• The best team to support you,
• Multisport card,
• Pension plan,
• Life insurance,
• after-work events,
• private medical care
• lunch card,
• bright and spacious environment,
• sustainable office working environment.

Please note that we are working in a hybrid model of 3 days per week from the office in Warsaw