Technical Product Owner - Semantic AI & Knowledge Graph (m/w/d)

Your tasks

As a Technical Product Owner with a focus on Semantic AI & Knowledge Graph, you will be responsible for the semantic functionality of CIVORA, which connects urban data, processes, responsibilities, and rules to enable AI-powered applications. This functionality is managed as an independent product segment with its own vision, roadmap, and success criteria. You won't just prioritize a backlog; you will actively shape the long-term capabilities of this area and how it integrates with the overall CIVORA product.
Your role is not purely conceptual: you will engage with municipalities and partners to understand their real needs, translate these needs into a prioritized, realistic product backlog for the development team in collaboration with our architects, and even build prototypes to validate initial hypotheses. Your
role is anchored within the Product Management Team at DKSR, with close collaboration with Data Architecture and Product Development. You will bridge the gap between the business vision, customer realities, and technical implementation.

• Product Strategy & Management: You develop and maintain a long-term roadmap for the semantic functional area, define clear success criteria, and consistently prioritize the backlog based on customer value and strategic alignment with CIVORA. You are responsible for the quality and impact of this area – not just for delivery.
• Needs analysis & use case development: You will work closely with municipalities, public utilities and research partners to identify and refine specific use cases for semantic AI in urban systems.
• Technical collaboration: You work closely and regularly with your colleagues from Data Architecture and Product Development to validate technical feasibility, architectural decisions, and implementation quality.
• Proof-of-Concept Development: You will build and test initial semantic models, knowledge graphs, and prototypes yourself to validate feasibility and benefits.
• Reference architecture & scaling: You control the conceptual foundation for a modular, reusable semantic functional area in CIVORA - including a framework that allows the model to be efficiently transferred to real municipalities.
• AI Governance: You define how AI within CIVORA operates in a controlled, transparent and compliant manner based on knowledge graphs, data models and rules.

Your profile

Must-have

• Product Ownership: You have independently managed a product component through several release cycles, are accustomed to formulating a product vision, deriving a multi-year roadmap from it, and defending it against short-term demands. You know when something needs to be built to scale and when pragmatism is the right approach.
• Practical experience with knowledge graphs, ontologies or semantic data models (e.g. RDF/OWL/SHACL, SPARQL, property graphs such as Neo4j)
• Hands-on skills: You can build prototypes yourself to demonstrate your ideas.
• Experience with AI/NLP applications , e.g., retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, or agentic AI approaches.
• Strong communication skills: You can speak on equal terms with both municipal experts and software engineers.
• Professional experience in data modeling, data engineering, applied AI or a comparable technical role with a product focus
• Very good German and English

• Familiarity with best practices and frameworks in the field of data and AI governance
• Experience with digital twins, smart city solutions or geodata (GIS)
• Knowledge of relevant interoperability standards (e.g. NGSI-LD, GeoSPARQL, DCAT-AP)
• Experience with data landscapes in municipalities or specialist domains such as energy, mobility and critical infrastructure
• Experience in research or innovation projects (e.g., consortium projects, real-world laboratories)
• Experience in dealing with open-source communities

Why us?

What we offer

• Responsibility for a strategically central future role in a growing open-source product with societal impact
• Close collaboration with an experienced product and engineering team, as well as access to a strong research network (including Fraunhofer)
• Direct influence on the further development of CIVORA and on an ongoing strategic R&D project on sovereign semantic AI for urban systems
• Flat hierarchies, short decision-making processes, high level of personal responsibility
• Flexible work arrangements (hybrid) and a team that works on real, socially relevant problems

About Us

We are a team of experts in urban development, urban planning, sustainability, and data. We share a clear vision: ecologically valuable, socially just, and economically attractive cities and regions that confidently master their complex challenges because they have all the information they need.