Principal Ontologist - R&D DDSAI - Preclinical Sciences & Translational Safety

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine

About The Position

Johnson & Johnson is seeking a Principal Scientist/Ontologist to join its R&D DDSAI team and develop and support ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and semantic data standards for Preclinical Sciences & Translational Safety (PSTS). This hands-on scientific and technical role establishes consistent terminology across PSTS projects, translates scientific knowledge into reusable semantic models, and strengthens connections between PSTS and other departments across the R&D pipeline. The role works closely with scientific subject matter experts, data scientists, data engineers, and technology partners to make scientific data easier to find, understand, integrate, and reuse. The successful candidate combines ontology engineering expertise with an understanding of pharmaceutical research and a collaborative approach to complex scientific data challenges. The role supports ontology adoption, cross-R&D interoperability, governance and lifecycle management, and the preservation of scientific context needed for reliable data interpretation, reuse, analytics, and AI-supported research.

Requirements

Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, Engineering, or a related discipline.
Hands-on experience developing and maintaining ontologies, controlled vocabularies, semantic models, or knowledge graphs for scientific or biomedical applications.
Experience with ontology development tools such as Protégé and OWL/RDF, version control, and scripting for data transformation and validation.
Ability to translate scientific requirements into clear, reusable semantic structures.
Strong communication, problem-solving, and stakeholder engagement skills.
Ability to manage multiple workstreams and deliver practical solutions in a matrixed environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with pharmaceutical R&D data, particularly toxicology, safety sciences, ADME/DMPK, pathology, or translational research.
Familiarity with relevant biomedical ontologies and regulatory data standards, including CDISC/SEND.
Experience integrating semantic models into data pipelines, metadata catalogs, or knowledge graph platforms.
Understanding of FAIR data principles, provenance, reproducibility, and quality-governed scientific environments.
Experience facilitating cross-functional agreement on terminology and supporting adoption of shared standards.
Experience leveraging open-source biomedical ontologies such as GO and BAO to support harmonization, annotation, integration, and reuse of bioassay and experimental data across discovery and development workflows.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, test, and maintain ontology modules and controlled vocabularies for PSTS scientific workflows, including toxicology, safety assessment, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, and translational research.
Work with PSTS scientists to capture scientific concepts, definitions, relationships, and experimental context and translate them into structured semantic models.
Harmonize terminology across projects, studies, assays, and data sources while preserving scientifically meaningful distinctions.
Map project-specific terminology to shared R&D ontologies and relevant external standards, prioritizing reuse over unnecessary duplication.
Serve as an ontology and terminology resource for PSTS project teams, supporting requirements gathering, semantic annotation, data mapping, and issue resolution.
Partner with data engineers and platform teams to incorporate ontology terms and mappings into data products, metadata systems, and scientific workflows.
Provide documentation, examples, and training to help scientific and technical teams adopt standardized terminology.
Maintain a prioritized backlog of ontology enhancements and support requests aligned with PSTS scientific needs.
Collaborate with peer ontologists and scientific data teams across discovery, development, therapeutic areas, and other R&D functions.
Establish shared definitions connecting PSTS evidence with upstream discovery and downstream development data.
Identify opportunities to reuse ontology components and improve cross-study and cross-functional data integration.
Apply modeling guidelines, naming conventions, persistent identifiers, version control, change management, and release practices.
Maintain traceable definitions, mappings, provenance, and documentation of modeling decisions.
Assess ontology change impacts on consuming projects and coordinate updates with scientific and technical stakeholders.
Help ensure PSTS datasets retain the scientific context needed for reliable interpretation and reuse.
Evaluate terminology extraction and mapping automation approaches with appropriate scientific review.

Benefits

Company consolidated retirement plan (pension) and savings plan (401(k)), subject to plan terms.
Eligibility to participate in the Company’s long-term incentive program.
Vacation: 120 hours per calendar year.
Sick time: 40 hours per calendar year, with specified state variations for Colorado and Washington.
Holiday pay, including floating holidays: 13 days per calendar year.
Work, Personal and Family Time: up to 40 hours per calendar year.
Parental Leave: 480 hours within one year of the birth, adoption, or foster care of a child.
Bereavement Leave: 240 hours for an immediate family member and 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year.
Caregiver Leave: 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period.
Volunteer Leave: 32 hours per calendar year.
Military Spouse Time-Off: 80 hours per calendar year.