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Knowledge Engineering Associate Director

Accenture
Chicago, IL, USAHybridAI/MLDirector+$138,800 - $434,000Posted: yesterday

About the role

About Accenture: Accenture helps the world's leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world.

We bring together the talent of our approximately 814,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $74 billion in FY26 revenue.

Visit us at accenture.com. We Are: Accenture is recognized as a global leader in AI and cloud transformation, helping businesses across industries reimagine the digital core for an AI-native operating model. Through partnerships with frontier AI labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, and the leading cloud providers, Accenture delivers end-to-end services that drive innovation and business agility.

The Digital Core Reinvention practice builds the enterprise ontology — the semantic layer that turns raw data into contextualized enterprise knowledge, and the knowledge agents that maintain, evolve, and query it. Where our problem-scoped ontology work wields meaning against a single problem, this discipline builds the meaning the whole enterprise stands on. You Are: A senior knowledge engineer ready to own the discipline: scaled ontology creation, the semantic layer, and the public technical argument for why AI without engineered meaning is guesswork.

This is the senior technical track at Accenture: we hire people here who would rather own a methodology than carry a number. The Work: As an Associate Director in this family you are the technical owner of our enterprise knowledge engineering services. Concretely, that means three things at once: You own the methodology. Scaled ontology creation, semantic-layer design, knowledge-agent patterns — yours to defend, evolve, and sign off on, including the boundary with problem-scoped ontology work (build the ontology here; wield it there). You own the asset portfolio.

Ontology templates, entity-resolution patterns, semantic serving reference architectures — every engagement consumes or produces one. You own the technical point of view. You can explain the value of the semantic layer to a CFO and defend an OWL modeling decision to an architect in the same meeting — and the market hears the argument from you. Travel may be required for this role. The amount of travel will vary from 0 to 100% depending on business need and client requirements.

Here's what you need: Minimum of 10 years in knowledge engineering, semantic web, ontology design, or adjacent data disciplines, with at least 2 years specifically on AI/LLM-based work. Minimum of 6 years with knowledge-graph technologies (RDF, SPARQL, SHACL, property graphs) and enterprise graph databases. Minimum of 6 years of managerial or discipline-leadership experience, able to explain the value of the semantic layer to senior stakeholders (per the W16 scaffold for this family). Minimum of 2 years of publishing or speaking publicly in the discipline.

Minimum of 3 years owning a productized offering, platform, or methodology — not just consulting within one. Bachelor's degree or equivalent (minimum 12 years) work experience. (If Associate's Degree, must have minimum 6 years work experience). Professional Skills Required: Demonstrated ability to walk into a client executive's office and earn the room on technical depth alone. A clear, defensible point of view on the current AI frontier — what's real, what's hype, what matters in 18 months — that you can articulate publicly.

Bonus Points if You Have: Retrieval-augmented generation and agent context engineering at enterprise scale. Experience running ontology governance — versioning meaning the way engineers version code. Multi-tenant or federated semantic-layer architectures. Comfort being outranked on pipeline conversations and outvoting on technical ones. A track record of editing methodology the way engineers edit code. Frontier-partner relationships (Anthropic, OpenAI, hyperscaler AI orgs, or equivalent).

Compensation at Accenture varies depending on a wide array of factors, which may include but are not limited to the specific office location, role, skill set, and level of experience. As required by local law, Accenture provides a reasonable range of compensation for roles that may be hired as set forth below. We anticipate this job posting will be posted until 12/04/2026. Accenture offers a market competitive suite of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, and long-term disability coverage, a 401(k) plan, bonus opportunities, paid holidays, and paid time off.

See more information on our benefits here: U.S.

Employee Benefits | Accenture Role Location Annual Salary Range California $163,000 to $434,000 Colorado $163,000 to $375,000 Connecticut $163,000 to $375,000 District of Columbia $173,500 to $399,300 Illinois $150,900 to $375,000 Maine $138,800 to $319,400 Maryland $163,000 to $375,000 Massachusetts $163,000 to $399,300 Minnesota $163,000 to $375,000 New York $150,900 to $434,000 New Jersey $173,500 to $434,000 Ohio $150,900 to $347,200 Virginia $150,900 to $399,300 Washington $173,500 to $399,300 About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the

world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 791,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships.

We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities.

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We come together from different backgrounds across the world and work with the latest technologies to create value and growth for our clients. With us, you’ll continue to learn and grow so you can advance in your career. Your personal dreams and ambitions are just as important to us; that’s why we offer support any way we can—when you thrive, we all thrive. Explore your next step at Accenture Belong. Grow. Thrive. Join a great place to work for reinventors who drive meaningful change for our clients, communities, and the world. Wo rld. Explore your next step at Accenture

Minimum requirements

  • 10+ years in knowledge engineering or related fields, including 2+ years in AI/LLM work
  • 6+ years with knowledge-graph technologies and enterprise graph databases
  • 6+ years managerial or leadership experience, plus 2+ years public speaking or publishing in the discipline

This listing was parsed by AI and may not be complete. Check the official posting on Accenture's site for the most accurate information.

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