Ontology Engineer — Formal Verification & Automated Reasoning jobs in United States
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Grafton Sciences · 11 hours ago

Ontology Engineer — Formal Verification & Automated Reasoning

positionRedwood City, CA
timeFull-time
remoteOnsite
senioritySenior Level

Grafton Sciences is building AI systems with general physical ability, aiming to push the frontier of physical AI. They are seeking an Ontology Engineer specializing in Formal Verification and Automated Reasoning to define and maintain the formal semantic foundations of complex software and AI-driven systems.

Machine LearningRobotics
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H1B Sponsor Likelynote

Responsibilities

Design and maintain formal ontologies capturing domain concepts, relations, and invariants
Encode ontological constraints into machine-checkable specifications used by verification tools
Translate ontologies into logical representations suitable for SMT solving, model checking, or theorem proving
Define and validate semantic invariants that systems must preserve across all executions
Collaborate with software, systems, and AI engineers to align implementations with formal semantic contracts
Develop tooling and pipelines that connect ontologies to verification and reasoning workflows
Analyze counterexamples and verification failures to refine ontologies and system designs
Support reasoning systems, planners, or agents by ensuring their inputs and outputs are ontologically valid

Qualification

Ontology engineeringFormal verificationAutomated reasoningProgramming PythonProgramming RustProgramming OCamlProgramming JavaSMT solversModel checkersTheorem proversLogic programmingSemantic tooling integrationType theoryOWL/RDF ontologiesConstraint-based validationNeuro-symbolic systemsOpen-source contributions

Required

Strong experience in ontology engineering or knowledge representation
Ability to define precise semantics for complex, evolving domains
Experience with ontological constraints, typing systems, and validation rules
Hands-on experience with formal verification or automated reasoning
Familiarity with one or more of: SMT solvers (Z3, CVC5), Model checkers (TLA+, Alloy), Theorem provers (Coq, Lean, Isabelle), Rule-based or logic programming systems (Datalog, Prolog)
Strong programming skills (e.g., Python, Rust, OCaml, Java)
Experience building or integrating semantic tooling into production systems
Ability to balance formal rigor with engineering practicality
MS or PhD in Computer Science, Information Science, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent depth through experience)

Preferred

Experience compiling OWL/RDF ontologies into logical constraints
SHACL or constraint-based validation tied to verification pipelines
Background in type theory, semantics, or programming languages
Experience verifying AI, agentic, or neuro-symbolic systems
Contributions to ontology standards, verification tools, or open-source semantic systems

Benefits

Competitive salary
Meaningful equity
Benefits

Company

Grafton Sciences

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Building systems of general physical ability to enable superintelligence
dateFounded in 2024
location
Redwood City, California, USA
people-size11-50 employees
web-link
https://www.graftonsciences.com/

H1B Sponsorship

Grafton Sciences has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (2)

Funding

Current Stage
Early Stage
Company data provided by crunchbase