Senior Scientific Taxonomist/Ontologist

This role is based out of our corporate headquarters office in Boston. We are a flexible hybrid environment with 3 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) in the office.   

Senior Scientific Taxonomist/Ontologist

The Platform Merchandising Team at Labviva is responsible for expanding, improving and enriching our product data taxonomy structure to support a best-in-class shopping experience for our customers. We are relentless about ensuring the merchandising data, storefront features, and overall customer experience is constantly improving. Some of our major product categories we help customers access include:

• Antibodies

• Chemicals

• Pipettes & Pipette tips

• Biological Kits

• Chromatography

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Scientific Taxonomist/Ontologist to join our Platform Merchandising team. This role is responsible for defining and executing product catalog content strategy and product content design across a diverse set of life science & lab supply product categories. Collaboration with various teams, including user experience, search, product management, operations, development, and implementations teams, will be essential in providing strategic mentorship and operational support.

As part of a content-centric organization, you will be accountable for user-friendly navigation, product content taxonomy, product relationship taxonomy and ontology through information models and knowledge graphs. Additionally, you will lead the development of frameworks and conventions to ensure data/information quality, consistency, and compliance with industry standards.

How You Will Contribute

• Lead development of product category-based taxonomies to optimally organize and categorize product catalog information across a diverse catalog of reagents, chemicals and instrumentation

• Implement taxonomy changes for browse navigation and attribution category structures

• Align and establish the taxonomy structure for product relationships required to drive customer AOV

• Develop and maintain the SOP documentation for implementing taxonomy changes

• Partner with data science on creating training datasets to informs machine learning classification models 

• Carry out internal and external competitive research on product taxonomy structures

• Educate both technical and non-technical audiences on information architecture concepts

• Facilitate collaboration with partners to develop business terms, vocabularies, technology capabilities, information patterns, dependencies, and relationships

• Analyze website metrics and product discovery behaviors to make data-driven decisions 

What you bring to the Team

• Education: Bachelor's degree in scientific field, such Chemistry, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, or Molecular Biology

• 3 years of experience with website taxonomy management, information architecture, information management, data management, database management, search engine platforms or related experience

• Experience with products used in scientific research for pharma and biotech

• Experience creating and communicating technical requirements to engineering team

• Advanced data manipulation techniques within Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets

• Familiar with Database concepts: Objects, Tables, Queries, Relationships

• SQL proficient is a plus

• Experience working in for a life science manufacturer or distributor is a plus

• Experience working with Pimcore is a plus

• Understands of the flow of E-Commerce product catalog information from search to checkout

• Customer centric perspective and champions the needs of customers and stakeholders

• Demonstrable ability to devise, communicate, and implement information architecture strategy

• Deep familiarity with taxonomies, ontologies, and classification systems and their management

• Familiarity with machine learning and natural language concepts and applications

• Intellectually curious, technically savvy, detail oriented, entrepreneurial

• Adept at diving deep into search including algorithms and technical details

About the Company

Labviva is on a mission to accelerate the pace of life science research. We connect researchers with suppliers of reagents, chemicals and instrumentation in an intuitive user-friendly platform that supports the priorities of scientists while staying compliant with purchasing rules.

We are a venture-funded start-up that acknowledges that the unique contributions of each team member drive our success. We commit to creating a diverse and inclusive workspace where people can make a positive impact. At Labviva, we invest in our employees and strongly believe that a culture of respect and support drives success for all involved.

We provide a competitive set of benefits including but not limited to a hybrid – office work option, health benefits, flexible time off, parental leave, competitive salary and equity, and Thursday company lunches.

We are an equal opportunity employer and building a diverse team is our top priority. At Labviva, we celebrate all. Help us build an inclusive community that will transform the life sciences industry. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, disability, marital status, pregnancy, protected veteran status, protected genetic information, political affiliation, or any other characteristics as outlined by federal, state or local laws, regulations, or ordinances.