--- title: 'Senior Knowledge Engineer, Ontology and Data Standards (Contract) at Altos Labs' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-knowledge-engineer-ontology-and-data-standards-contract-altos-labs-san-0gj7kggw8sq9' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-15' --- # Senior Knowledge Engineer, Ontology and Data Standards (Contract) at Altos Labs - **Company:** Altos Labs - **Location:** San Francisco Bay Area, CA - **Posted:** 2026-10-08 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-15 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/altoslabs/jobs/6217024004 ## Job description ## Our Mission Our mission is to restore cell health and resilience through cell rejuvenation to reverse disease, injury, and the disabilities that can occur throughout life. For more information, see our website at [altoslabs.com.](https://altoslabs.com/) Our Value Our Single Altos Value: Everyone Owns Achieving Our Inspiring Mission. Diversity at Altos Altos Labs has been named one of the Top 3 Biotech Companies and ranked for the second year on the Forbes 2026 Best Startups in America list.  At Altos, exceptional scientists and industry leaders from around the world work together to advance a shared mission. Our intentional focus is on Belonging, so that all employees know that they are valued for their unique perspectives. We are all accountable for sustaining a diverse and inclusive environment. ## What You Will Contribute To Altos - As a contract Senior Knowledge Engineer, Ontology and Data Standards, you will drive how our team represents biological knowledge At Altos - We have built the machinery: a large canonical LinkML/Biolink schema including REST/MCP/CLI service layer; specification packages covering multiple prior-knowledge sources; and an agentic / human-in-the-loop curation framework. What it lacks is a technical owner—someone to govern and administer the content. - You are the scientific translation layer between biological discovery and AI platform engineering. You will elicit implicit models from bench and computational scientists, encode them rigorously, and utilize the agentic workflows that scale curation beyond what manual review can reach. - This role carries explicit decision rights: review authority on canonical schema change, ownership of the curation conventions that data atlas and engineering teams follow. ## Key Responsibilities - Knowledge Modeling & Ontology Engineering: - Design, maintain, and extend internal LinkML / Biolink models and ontologies covering experimental and prior-knowledge metadata—driven by competency questions from user requirements and not by source-side convenience. - Own mapping and alignment as a discipline: cross-ontology mappings with recorded justification and provenance, and upstream term requests as appropriate. - Serve as reviewer of record for schema change, holding the line that reuse precedes coining anything new. - Agentic & Automated Curation: - Administer, steer, and refine our agentic curation framework and Model Context Protocol (MCP) service layer to scale data profiling, validation, and entity mapping far beyond manual capacity. - Standardize tool definitions (FastMCP), prompt templates, and LLM-driven workflows that extract, normalize, and validate metadata from prior-knowledge sources and experimental assets. - Biological Data Harmonization: - Define mapping patterns and metadata conventions for diverse experimental modalities (genomics, single-cell, screening data) to conform to the canonical schema. - Establish standardized conventions that allow both external prior-knowledge sources and internal experimental datasets to cleanly map into the LinkML graph architecture. - Quality, Evaluation & Provenance: - Establish and maintain automated validation, LLM-assisted quality control, and CI/CD under a "curation as code" paradigm—extending existing drift and coverage gates into the places where semantic review is still manual. - Measure whether the knowledge is correct, not merely reproducible: gold-standard sets, inter-curator agreement, and precision/recall on automated extraction. ## Who You Are - Education & Experience: PhD with 5+ years, or MS with 8+ years, in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genomics, Systems Biology, or a related life science field. This is a senior individual-contributor role with organization-wide technical authority and no direct reports. - Biological Data Lifecycle: Direct experience turning messy, real-world exploratory datasets (genomics, single-cell, screening, imaging) into structured metadata. - Ontology & Semantic Web Expertise: Strong working knowledge of OBO Foundry standards, OWL, RDF, and SPARQL, with schema modeling experience in LinkML, Biolink, or BioCypher. Experience with Protégé, ROBOT, ODK, or SSSOM mapping sets is a plus. - Python & Agentic AI Tooling: Proficient in modular Python (3.12, uv, pandas, Pydantic, pytest), and able to read and extend a substantial existing codebase rather than only scripting against it. Active hands-on experience with AI environments (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) and building agentic LLM workflows, custom MCP tools, or RAG pipelines. - Software & Data Management: Familiarity with Git, GitHub Actions, graph/relational databases, and cloud storage (e.g., AWS S3). The salary range for Redwood City, CA: - Senior Engineer: $105/hr to $123/hr Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location. For UK applicants, before submitting your application: - Please click here to read the Altos Labs EU and UK Applicant Privacy Notice ([bit.ly/eu_uk_privacy_notice](https://bit.ly/eu_uk_privacy_notice)) - This Privacy Notice is not a contract, express or implied and it does not set terms or conditions of employment. ## Equal Opportunity Employment We value collaboration and scientific excellence. We believe that a culture of belonging are foundational to scientific innovation and inquiry. At Altos Labs, exceptional scientists and industry leaders from around the world work together to advance a shared mission. Our intentional focus is on Belonging, so that all employees know that they are valued for their unique perspectives. We are all accountable for sustaining an inclusive environment. Altos Labs provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Altos prohibits unlawful discrimination and harassment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Thank you for your interest in Altos Labs where we strive for a culture of scientific excellence, learning, and belonging. Note: Altos Labs will not ask you to download a messaging app for an interview or outlay your own money to get started as an employee. If this sounds like your interaction with people claiming to be with Altos, it is not legitimate and has nothing to do with Altos. Learn more about a common job scam at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-spot-avoid-online-job-scams-biron-clark/ ## About Altos Labs ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Altos Labs is a biotechnology company pioneering cellular rejuvenation programming to reverse disease, injury, and disabilities by restoring cell health and resilience. - **Entity Type**: Private (believed to be well-funded by high-profile investors including Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner; no public funding rounds listed) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA (also major sites in San Diego, CA and Cambridge, UK) - **Founded**: 2021 (publicly launched in January 2022) - **Founders**: Hal Barron (CEO), Hans Bishop (President), Rick Klausner (Chief Scientific Advisor) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Biotechnology / Longevity & Cell Rejuvenation / Drug Discovery - **Target customers**: B2B/Institutional (partners, academic collaborators); ultimate end-users are patients with age-related diseases - **Mission statement**: “To restore cell health and resilience through cell rejuvenation to reverse disease, injury and the disabilities that can occur throughout life.” ## Products & Services Currently in the research and preclinical/early clinical stage. No marketed products yet. Major initiatives include: - **[Cell Rejuvenation Programming Platform]**: Proprietary technology based on partial cellular reprogramming (building on Yamanaka factors and Belmonte lab discoveries) to reset epigenetic age and restore cell function. - **[Institute of Computation]**: Developing multi-scale generative AI models to decode the “language of cell health” and accelerate discovery of rejuvenation-based therapies. - **[Institute of Medicine]**: Translational arm focused on converting fundamental biology into potential breakthrough medicines for age-related diseases. - **[Discovery Engine]**: Integrated platform combining experimental biology, high-quality internal data generation, and computational modeling to identify novel targets and therapies. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed; widely reported to have raised over **$3 billion** in initial financing (one of the largest biotech startup financings ever). Investors include Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner, and others. - **Key Metric**: **$3+ billion total funding** (reported launch round) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Jeff Bezos (via Bezos Expeditions), Yuri Milner (via DST Global), and other undisclosed high-net-worth individuals; partnerships with leading academic institutions including the Salk Institute and Cambridge University. - **Growth Signals**: Rapidly scaling headcount (26 open roles listed on Greenhouse as of mid-2026); expansion of computational and AI teams; launched Institute of Computation; appointed Joan Mannick (M.D.) as Chief Medical Officer in 2025 to lead early clinical development. ## Competitive Advantages - **Massive capital base**: Over $3 billion in funding provides long runway for high-risk, long-horizon science. - **World-class scientific leadership**: CEO Hal Barron (ex-GSK, ex-Roche), President Hans Bishop (ex-Juno Therapeutics), Chief Scientific Advisor Rick Klausner, and founding scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte (pioneer of partial reprogramming). - **“Academic freedom meets industry focus” model**: Combines the freedom of academic inquiry with the discipline and resources of a biotech company. - **AI-first approach**: Dedicated Institute of Computation with a focus on generative AI and foundational models for biology, differentiating from traditional drug discovery. - **Multi-site global footprint**: Operations spanning US (Bay Area, San Diego) and UK (Cambridge) attract top talent from both sides of the Atlantic. ## Strategic Focus - **Near-term**: Advancing first therapeutic programs into clinical trials; building out the Institute of Computation and AI models; scaling drug discovery and development capabilities. - **Long-term**: Transform medicine by developing therapies that address the root cause of disease—cellular aging—rather than just symptoms. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-driven culture**: Focus on a single, ambitious goal—reversing disease through cell rejuvenation—unites the organization. - **Unique work model**: Blends academic freedom (pursue deep questions, publish, collaborate openly) with industry urgency (focus on medicines, milestones, patient impact). - **Computational focus**: Heavy investment in AI/ML (machine learning scientists, AI engineers, computational biology) makes it appealing for those interested in the intersection of tech and biology. - **Work environment**: Collaborative, interdisciplinary, and global; values diverse perspectives. Described as “a unique and inspiring place to work” with “many ways to contribute to our mission.” - **Currently hiring across multiple disciplines**: Discovery Science, Drug Development, Computation, Technology, and Operations—with roles in San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Cambridge, UK. - **Perks/culture highlights**: Not explicitly detailed on careers page, but the emphasis on “freedom to collaborate broadly” and “big questions” suggests a high-autonomy, high-trust environment. ### Company Website & Careers 1. [altoslabs.com](https://www.altoslabs.com/) – Official company site (overview, science, about, careers) 2. [altoslabs.com/careers](https://www.altoslabs.com/careers) – Careers page (mission, culture, job listings) 3. [altoslabs.com/about](https://www.altoslabs.com/about) – About page (leadership, institutes, model) 4. [altoslabs.com/science](https://www.altoslabs.com/science) – Science page (founding science, partial reprogramming) ### Job Board 5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/altoslabs](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/altoslabs) – Greenhouse job board (26 open positions as of mid-2026) ## Other roles at Altos Labs - [Manager / Senior Manager Genomics Hub](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-senior-manager-genomics-hub-altos-labs-cambridge-2c83teqhdrg9) — Cambridge, MA - [Senior Patent Counsel / Director, Intellectual Property](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-patent-counsel-director-intellectual-property-altos-labs-san-diego-rqa72w59efpg) — San Diego, CA - [Deputy General Counsel and Vice President, Intellectual Property](https://feeny.ai/job/deputy-general-counsel-and-vice-president-intellectual-property-altos-labs-san-rfncypwagg9c) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Director / Senior Director, Lab-in-the-Loop](https://feeny.ai/job/director-senior-director-lab-in-the-loop-altos-labs-san-francisco-bay-area-x0r6dn63de1j) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA / San Diego, CA - [Senior Manager/Manager, CRO and KOL Alliances (Contract to Hire)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-manager-cro-and-kol-alliances-contract-to-hire-altos-labs-san-vw71whqxekvc) — San Diego, CA - [Scientist / Sr. Scientist In Vivo Translational Sciences](https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-sr-scientist-in-vivo-translational-sciences-altos-labs-san-francisco-89z998pb5r1a) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Scientist / Senior Scientist, Membrane Biochemistry](https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-senior-scientist-membrane-biochemistry-altos-labs-san-francisco-bay-2as6grjx00j9) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Scientist, Neurodegeneration](https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-neurodegeneration-altos-labs-san-francisco-bay-area-ptan9vfe9dfh) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Senior Research Associate, Drug Discovery](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-research-associate-drug-discovery-altos-labs-san-francisco-bay-area-es0k39mddn6n) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Director / Senior Director, Machine Learning for Biology](https://feeny.ai/job/director-senior-director-machine-learning-for-biology-altos-labs-san-diego-tav9vfz1h2qf) — San Diego, CA / San Francisco Bay Area, CA