Platform Architect, Semantics & Ontology

About Kinaxis

Are you looking to join an innovative, market-leading company where you can truly elevate your career? At Kinaxis we are serious about culture, we are serious about technology, we are serious about customers, and we are serious about not taking ourselves too seriously. If you are looking to be part of an incredible growth story, then we might just be the place for you!

In 1984, we started out as a team of three engineers. Today, we have grown to become a global organization with over 2000 employees around the world, 6 global office and a best-in-class HQ in Ottawa, Canada. As winners of several Top Employer awards globally, we are proud to work with our customers and employees towards solving some of the biggest challenges facing supply chains today.

Kinaxis is a global leader in modern supply chain orchestration, powering complex global supply chains, and supporting the people who manage them. Our powerful, AI infused platform provides full transparency and visibility across end-to-end supply chains, enabling our customers to make faster, better decisions. We are trusted by renowned global brands to provide the agility and predictability needed to navigate today’s volatility and disruption. With more than 40,000 users in over 100 countries, we are expanding our team as we continue to innovate and revolutionize how we support our customers.

Location

Canada or USA

• Ottawa and Toronto, Canada - Hybrid
• Other Canadian or USA locations - Remote

About the team

Kinaxis builds software that powers some of the world’s most complex supply chains. Our Maestro platform supports mission-critical planning and optimization for global enterprises, where correctness, performance, and shared understanding are essential.

The team you’ll join builds the foundational systems that make this possible - defining how data is represented, governed, and used across the platform. As our products and ecosystem grow, ensuring scalability and semantic consistency has become a core architectural challenge. In this role you will establish a durable semantic backbone that allows teams to move quickly without losing shared understanding.

If you’ve built semantic platforms before and want to do it at product scale, this role offers both the scope and the responsibility to make it count.

About the role

Vacancy Status

This is an existing job vacancy

What you will do

Architect the Data Fabric Platform

• Lead the evolution of a Databricks-centric Data Fabric using Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Delta Sharing, and custom orchestration.
• Design core platform primitives such as identity, tenancy models, access controls, compute quotas, and automation required to operate at scale.

Define and Own the Semantic Foundation

• Define and maintain the canonical business ontology that underpins Kinaxis products, decoupling business meaning from physical storage and implementation.
• Design a governed semantic layer that ensures consistent interpretation of core supply-chain concepts (e.g., demand, supply, time, capacity, constraints) across products and services.
• Establish semantic contracts and versioning strategies that support evolution without fragmentation or breaking consumers.

Make Semantics Operable

• Design how semantic models and mappings are authored, versioned, governed, and served in a multi-tenant environment.
• Ensure semantic definitions integrate cleanly with compute, APIs, and AI/ML workflows so meaning is preserved through transformation and inference.
• Build frameworks and abstractions that allow product teams to benefit from shared semantics without requiring deep ontology expertise.

Enable Developers and Teams

• Translate infrastructure complexity (Kubernetes, Azure/GCP, Databricks internals) into a coherent and reliable developer experience.
• Provide clear boundaries, guarantees, and abstractions that allow teams to move faster and safer on the platform.

What we are looking for

#Senior; #LI-EM1

Work With Impact: Our platform directly helps companies power the world’s supply chains. We see the results of what we do out in the world every day, when we see store shelves stocked, when medications are available for our loved ones, and so much more.

Work with Fortune 500 Brands: Companies across industries trust us to help them take control of their integrated business planning and digital supply chain. Some of our customers include Lockheed Martin, Unilever, P&G, ExxonMobil, Cisco and more.

Social Responsibility at Kinaxis: Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee weighs in on hiring practices, talent assessment training materials, and mandatory training on unconscious bias and inclusion fundamentals. Sustainability is key to what we do and we’re committed to a long-term net-zero operations strategy. We are involved in our communities and support causes where we can make the most impact.

People matter at Kinaxis and here are some of the perks and benefits we offer, which may vary by location and employee:

• Flexible vacation and Kinaxis Days (company-wide days off)
• Flexible work options
• Physical and mental well-being programs
• Regularly scheduled virtual fitness classes
• Mentorship programs, training, and career development
• Recognition programs and referral rewards
• Hackathons

For more information, visit the Kinaxis website at www.kinaxis.com or the company’s blog at http://blog.kinaxis.com.

Kinaxis welcomes candidates to apply to our inclusive community. We provide accommodations upon request to ensure fairness and accessibility throughout our recruitment process for all candidates, including those with specific needs or disabilities. If you require an accommodation, please reach out to us at recruitmentprograms@kinaxis.com. This contact information is for accessibility requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

Kinaxis is committed to ensuring a fair and transparent recruitment process. We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the initial step of the recruitment process to compare submitted resumes against the job description to identify candidates whose education, experience, and skills most closely match the requirements of the role. After the initial screening, all subsequent decisions regarding your application, including final selection, are made by our human recruitment team. AI does not make any final hiring decisions.