Senior Specialist – Semantic & AI Data Context Services

Job description

Job Description The Opportunity Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare. Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products. Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats. Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our company’s IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy. A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers. Role Overview We are seeking a Senior Engineer / Architect who knows that AI unlocks value only atop a foundation of trusted data and rich context. You will turn raw IT Ops data into layered, contextualized intelligence—enabling the shift from descriptive to predictive to prescriptive decisioning and autonomous agents. Owning the architecture end-to-end, you'll drive everything from semantic modelling, ontologies, knowledge graphs, and knowledge bases to agentic context servicing (MCP Server & Gateway) that exposes governed context to AI and BI solutions. Key Responsibilities: Own the end-to-end architecture spanning the Semantic, Data Context, and Context Servicing layers for enterprise IT data. Design and publish ER models—defining entities, attributes, keys, grain, relationships, and cardinality in collaboration with stakeholders. Develop ontologies, mapping business terms, DW tables from conceptual design to physical data models. Curate the knowledge base of reusable, governed business entities, semantic views, and BI-ready fields. Architect and implement the MCP Server and MCP Gateway to expose governed context to AI and BI consumers. Build LLM orchestration capabilities, including synonym resolution, metric selection, and entity resolution. Develop the Query Translation Engine / SQL Generator that converts natural-language questions into safe, governed, executable logic. Integrate the Security Engine to enforce access controls—row-level security, column masking, RBAC, and policy constraints—with full audit logging. Proficiency in Python, PySpark for semantic data processing, graph analytics, and AI-driven applications Experience with RDF and OWL for semantic modelling and ontology development. Partner with Data Governance, Risk, Security, and Compliance to embed policies, controls, and audit trails across the context layers. Support scenario-driven delivery, enabling agents to answer complex business questions with accurate facts and explanatory reasoning—the "what" and the "why." Collaborate with and guide fellow team members in building the semantic and context layers, providing technical direction, mentorship, and best-practice standards to uplift overall team capability. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: Bachelor's degree in information technology, Computer Science or any Technology stream. 7+ years of experience in platform engineering, cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering and DevOps. Strong hands-on experience with AWS cloud technologies. Strong hands-on expertise with knowledge graph and graph database technologies, including AWS Neptune. Experience with semantic modelling / semantic layer platforms such as Timbr AI. Familiarity with data context, semantic systems, ontology-driven platforms, or knowledge graphs. Working knowledge of agentic AI, prompt engineering, and context engineering concepts. Who we are: We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world. What we look for: Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today. Required Skills: Amazon Neptune, Cloud Computing, Cloud Technology, Data Engineering, Data Security, Governance Framework, Graph Databases, Knowledge Graph, Model Context Protocol, Model Driven Design, Ontology, Orchestration (Computing), Platform Development, Platform Engineering, Platform Management, Query Language, Semantic Modeling, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, System Designs, System Integration, Team Mentoring, Testing Preferred Skills: Databricks Platform, Metadata, Vector Databases Current Employees apply HERE Current Contingent Workers apply HERE Secondary Language(s) Job Description: #MSDHYDIT Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. Employee Status: Regular Relocation: Domestic VISA Sponsorship: No Travel Requirements: No Travel Required Flexible Work Arrangements: Hybrid Shift: Not Indicated Valid Driving License: No Hazardous Material(s): n/a Job Posting End Date: 09/3/2026*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.