Usually jobs in established corporations have a specific goal, task, or focus that maps directly to the company's bottom-line and ROI. Research, on the other hand, requires funding and is more like an investment strategy for a company. If you want to create your job, and bridge that gap, then try and marry the two. How could the fruits of your work improve a company's bottom line?
My experience working and hiring PhDs in the past has been one that they sometimes are used to this being defined for them and/or used to applying to grants/funds in established academic environments but rarely do they think of creating the path themselves (except for some outliers). The fact that you are already thinking of that puts you in that category.
Lastly, when working at the edge of something and creating your job, be ready for this mantra: https://37signals.com/13
“Bridging the gap between PhD and SWE” would be a good subtitle for my career.
I started out writing software for scientists, psychologists, first at a university, then a small company. After eight years of that I went to grad school and got a PhD in CS (ML/AI), and did a postdoc, before going into industry, and eventually landed a role in what was then called “data mining”, later “data science”, then “machine learning engineering”. In the beginning when the team was small, we were all generalists, doing both the science work and the engineering. As we grew, specialized roles developed, but I was able to chart a course somewhere between a SWE and a scientist, doing a lot of knowledge work, experiments, measurement, and presentation, but also building common tools that the rest of the team can use.
I’ve been out of the job market for 15 years now, but I think any company that does science and builds software would value your skillset. In fact, when I was shifting from academia to industry, I started out determined to be a “scientist”. After all, what was my PhD for, anyway? But my SWE chops were pretty evident on my resume, and I had a hard time getting traction. Then I got brought in for an interview at a company that had a team of scientists and a team of engineers and they brought me in for a split interview with both teams. It was clear by the end that they wanted me as an engineer, but I was insistent on wanting to be a scientist. They didn’t offer me a job, and I was disappointed. The disappointment was educational for me, and I rewrote my resume to put more emphasis on my SWE skills, and that made it easier to find a role that fit me.
As a hiring manager, if someone shared a profile of a person with a PHD in earth sciences and 8 years of “full stack” experience I’d immediately assume they were a generalist with surface level familiarity and no mastery or depth in any one area.
I’d then look over the profile trying to disprove my assumption. Lacking a very strong signal in mastery of something, I’d pass on the profile.
Only at small scales are full stack engineers valuable. Their value is not in the quality of their output but in their ability to deliver make shift with that avoids having to pay for specialist who can deliver quality.
Assuming there is product market fit then generalists are replaced by specialists. This is where the true value aligns in terms of high quality output being compensated proportional to value created.
Given all this my advice is to pick two complementary areas, specialize in those areas and develop deep mastery. Keep your broad general skills. Then market yourself as the T or H shaped engineer that’s most valuable.
I would use your software skills to get in the door as a software engineer, then weasel into a sciencey position. That is:
1. Find a company that has non-software jobs that you like. Look at what companies advertise on their web sites; go to a few conferences (or watch talks) to see if some talks strike you with "ah, I can and want to do this" vibe; reach out to folks you went to grad school with, etc.
2. Apply and join as a software engineer. Don't try to sit on both chairs (software and science) during the application. You can apply to a science role, but this is likely much harder after 8 years of software focus.
3. Once in, chat with folks working on what you want to work on. Talk to folks you saw give talks. Go to internal presentations, post cool plots in slack, etc. In most companies it is pretty easy to move within roles. Plus, HR is no longer in the filtering pipeline and is not tossing resumes of anyone they think does not have the chops for the position.
Good luck!
As a personal data point -- I decided, late in my math PhD, to switch from academia to the industry after completion. A few times I switched jobs I went in as a software engineer, but within a few months moved to working on things I wanted to do beyond software (algorithms for tracking, perception, signal processing, sensor fusion, etc.).
It sounds like the kind of job you really want is going to be a bit of a unicorn. That means those kinds of jobs don't get advertised in job boards and have professional recruiters running around looking for candidates that fit. That in turn means that finding such a job is going to be a lot of networking and shoeleather. You'll probably have to go to a bunch of conferences, talk to people, and make contacts, and hope you can discover a place where your unique skills are a greater value to somebody's project than anyone with expertise in only one of those fields could be.
Well put. The standard practice is to hire a scientist and a developer, both with deep expertise, and have them work together. For a successful collaboration, it's obviously desirable for them to have some cross-disciplinary skills or experience. Ultimately, you're still primarily doing either development or research.
I did move from physics to becoming a SWE. I could put the knowledge I gained doing 3D rendering and GPU compute used for visualization and simulations in my academic jobs on my CV, and get a job as a SWE that way. Later I moved to another job where I could use my physics background to help develop a new sensor.
As for how to market yourself: first you should convert your academic CV to one that is suited for the type of companies you are applying for. Unless you wrote something that ended up in Nature or some other super high profile journal, companies typically don't care about your publications. What they do care about is things like: can you communicate well? How well can you organize things on your own? Do you handle stress well? You did a PhD, so the answer to those things is yes, you just need to write that in your CV in a way a company recruiter/interviewer understands, even if they themselves are not from academia. So you don't have two halves that belong to different resumes, you are just one person and you just translate your resume to the "language" that your prospective job provider speaks.
Finally, your list of skills does not need to be a perfect match for what a company is looking for. Of course, there needs to be some overlap, but as long as it means you can pick up new things quickly, it will be fine. That and being a good fit for the company's culture are the most important things.
I did not start out with a unicorn role, but in I found ways to apply my physics background in my current job.
Depends on what aspects of your scientific training you want to re-engage with. Do you want to be writing & publishing, giving talks, doing experiments, or building predictive statistical models? And what kind of software do you want to continue writing? Application development? More full-stack, with both backend and frontend? It is indeed hard to imagine places where you can find a strong mix of both.
If you want to mix earth sciences with development, you could look for positions on the Google Earth Engine team, or check out weather companies that do R&D like Purple Air. I imagine there’s plenty of software work mixed with earth sciences in the oil, gas, and mining industries; aviation & ocean shipping; hydroelectric, solar, and wind power maybe.
Being an earth sciences researcher is highly likely to involve writing software, whereas the average SWE role is not likely to need research, so my instinct would be to say just look research roles. Do most of today’s earth sciences researchers not spend a lot of their time at least writing statistical software in Python or R? My brother’s an anthropologist, and over the last decade his job has become more and more writing software to process datasets and do statistics.
If you’re just looking for a scientific mindset and a role that does experimentation, many companies (especially growing startups) have data science departments that, at a minimum, drive A-B testing experiments. Occasionally you can find applied research positions that are listed as just SWE roles, but those might be hard to find - I’d start by asking academic departments for leads.
A PhD means you can do novel research. As a full stack developer what novel subject(s) did you explore? That is the middle you are missing.
A big part of the problem is that you were spending time with tech stacks and frameworks. These have almost no practical utility value aside from attaining employment in a low skill area of software. I am saying that as a former 15 year JavaScript developer. Instead use your research background to solve real problems faced by businesses and users that you can measure.
Top-tier hedge funds are always looking for PhDs with engineering background, it’s a great combo of doing original research and being able to productionalize it
Make a list of the most interesting companies / areas you want to work in from a scientific perspective
Cold call or get introductions to their R&D leaders (principal researcher /director / VP). While connecting to something they or their company did, ask for a coffee meeting or phone call to learn more about their company and how it works.
Use this to Network network network. At some point a job will appear with interviews. Chances are good it’s with a good manager as they’re the ones taking time to build good teams and talent.
this is quite close to my boss's experience. he was an ecology major and phd in geography. i think you probably have about twice the software experience he had before merging the two
his application is quite simple and repeatable: optimizing field measurements through apps. or more simply, really good forms and reports. we focus on forestry but have been able to repeatedly repackage and adjust our software for clients who need to go someplace, fill out a form, and then report on that later and/or submit it to some unique system (etl stuff)
a phd proves you mastered a language and knowledge of process applicable to communicating with subject matter experts. youre certified in the scientific method. even when my boss doesnt have direct experience in a specific field, he can make an analogy to other client or phd work. clients are confident you can meet with members across their team to plan, implement, and test software to optimize their workflow without much hand holding
another thing: he does a lot of talks. after a few talks now he's asked all the time and one of ESRI's first calls for an alternate at conferences. a lot of this is the phd title. if you dont loathe public speaking too much than this can open doors to conversations with clients, professional partners, or institutions developing new tech
You are special. There are lots and lots of "software engineers" in the world. Very very few can bring scientific experience and knowledge to the job. I might look for a developer role in a large university project where they need programming skills and scientific rigor. Or a R&D person in a large software company or the government . These kinds of jobs aren't listed on Indeed or Monster. Attend conferences related to your field (don't attend the talks, hang around in the lobby and chat with people). Reach out to professors in your university or your field.
It's a bit ironic that the "soft" skills are becoming the hard skills nowadays. A lot of the AI buzz these days is around PM's, Data Scientists, etc. who now have the tools to code "well enough" and are attractive due to their people skills and/or other skillsets.
Not to say this is an objective analysis, just observing the subjective trends.
I was a studio recording engineer for about 7 years. I switched to software, and now I work in industrial global logistics. Job attributes I optimized for over the years: insulated from manufactured stress, autonomy, control over working hours, good relationships with my boss and coworkers.
I haven't done it myself but know a few people who did. They were all on the academic track and just made it happen and supporting their respective labs as postdocs. With an allowing or aligned professor I think it's very relistic in academia. From there you might find overlapping industry opportunities down the line. And I guess you have to be OK with pushing the envelope yourself.
I don't think it's at all as rare as I see other commenters say. I don't know earth sciences specifically but I'd be surprised if there is a STEM field where a strong SWE expertise isn't an asset you can put to regular use in research.
Some examples: machine learning scientists and engineers; quants and (quant) developers.
In either case, you're primarily either a developer or a scientist/researcher. Unless you're at an early stage startup or in a principal/managerial role, chances are your time is better spent deeply focusing on one area rather than both. Either putting the system to production or doing research. A lot of the time, these tasks can be carried out in parallel -- while one person is carrying out research, the other can be improving the system.
Not easy, but I have a friend who did this by reaching back out to his old professors and colleagues, figuring out what they needed, and ended up doing a swe project in his old lab and built that into a consultancy which does tech partnering for science.
I'm in much the same boat - however my SWE pivot was when I attempted to commercialize my PhD research along with my advisor. We had a startup for a few years and then got acquired by a global company. I now manage a team of SWEs and coordinate with SMEs in technical fields to make sure that our scientific software products are great in both areas. These roles exist, but probably not commonly as a straight hybrid - may have to lean into one and use the other as a differentiator/value-add. For me, I think I got here by caring about the customer experience first - which takes "whatever it takes" - software and science both. I have to be an evangelist for both of these things but only as a means to a common end, which is to help the end users expand their understanding and abilities with applied knowledge.
Maybe try finding a software engineering job at a place that also uses your scientific expertise. You may be able to find or create opportunities there. The position might not exist, but you can maximize your chances of something coming your way that needs both skill sets.
Usually jobs in established corporations have a specific goal, task, or focus that maps directly to the company's bottom-line and ROI. Research, on the other hand, requires funding and is more like an investment strategy for a company. If you want to create your job, and bridge that gap, then try and marry the two. How could the fruits of your work improve a company's bottom line?
My experience working and hiring PhDs in the past has been one that they sometimes are used to this being defined for them and/or used to applying to grants/funds in established academic environments but rarely do they think of creating the path themselves (except for some outliers). The fact that you are already thinking of that puts you in that category.
Lastly, when working at the edge of something and creating your job, be ready for this mantra: https://37signals.com/13
“Bridging the gap between PhD and SWE” would be a good subtitle for my career.
I started out writing software for scientists, psychologists, first at a university, then a small company. After eight years of that I went to grad school and got a PhD in CS (ML/AI), and did a postdoc, before going into industry, and eventually landed a role in what was then called “data mining”, later “data science”, then “machine learning engineering”. In the beginning when the team was small, we were all generalists, doing both the science work and the engineering. As we grew, specialized roles developed, but I was able to chart a course somewhere between a SWE and a scientist, doing a lot of knowledge work, experiments, measurement, and presentation, but also building common tools that the rest of the team can use.
I’ve been out of the job market for 15 years now, but I think any company that does science and builds software would value your skillset. In fact, when I was shifting from academia to industry, I started out determined to be a “scientist”. After all, what was my PhD for, anyway? But my SWE chops were pretty evident on my resume, and I had a hard time getting traction. Then I got brought in for an interview at a company that had a team of scientists and a team of engineers and they brought me in for a split interview with both teams. It was clear by the end that they wanted me as an engineer, but I was insistent on wanting to be a scientist. They didn’t offer me a job, and I was disappointed. The disappointment was educational for me, and I rewrote my resume to put more emphasis on my SWE skills, and that made it easier to find a role that fit me.
> I’ve been out of the job market for 15 years now
Wow - that's a long time at one company, or being without a job. Could you share more on that? Simple curiosity, thanks.
As a hiring manager, if someone shared a profile of a person with a PHD in earth sciences and 8 years of “full stack” experience I’d immediately assume they were a generalist with surface level familiarity and no mastery or depth in any one area.
I’d then look over the profile trying to disprove my assumption. Lacking a very strong signal in mastery of something, I’d pass on the profile.
Only at small scales are full stack engineers valuable. Their value is not in the quality of their output but in their ability to deliver make shift with that avoids having to pay for specialist who can deliver quality.
Assuming there is product market fit then generalists are replaced by specialists. This is where the true value aligns in terms of high quality output being compensated proportional to value created.
Given all this my advice is to pick two complementary areas, specialize in those areas and develop deep mastery. Keep your broad general skills. Then market yourself as the T or H shaped engineer that’s most valuable.
I would use your software skills to get in the door as a software engineer, then weasel into a sciencey position. That is:
1. Find a company that has non-software jobs that you like. Look at what companies advertise on their web sites; go to a few conferences (or watch talks) to see if some talks strike you with "ah, I can and want to do this" vibe; reach out to folks you went to grad school with, etc.
2. Apply and join as a software engineer. Don't try to sit on both chairs (software and science) during the application. You can apply to a science role, but this is likely much harder after 8 years of software focus.
3. Once in, chat with folks working on what you want to work on. Talk to folks you saw give talks. Go to internal presentations, post cool plots in slack, etc. In most companies it is pretty easy to move within roles. Plus, HR is no longer in the filtering pipeline and is not tossing resumes of anyone they think does not have the chops for the position.
Good luck!
As a personal data point -- I decided, late in my math PhD, to switch from academia to the industry after completion. A few times I switched jobs I went in as a software engineer, but within a few months moved to working on things I wanted to do beyond software (algorithms for tracking, perception, signal processing, sensor fusion, etc.).
Allow me to suggest Research Software Engineering - https://society-rse.org/careers/rse-stories/
US Organisation - https://us-rse.org/ UK (but also worldwide) - https://society-rse.org/
There are RSEs who specialise in Earth Science, e.g. https://socrse.github.io/geoscience-sig/
It sounds like the kind of job you really want is going to be a bit of a unicorn. That means those kinds of jobs don't get advertised in job boards and have professional recruiters running around looking for candidates that fit. That in turn means that finding such a job is going to be a lot of networking and shoeleather. You'll probably have to go to a bunch of conferences, talk to people, and make contacts, and hope you can discover a place where your unique skills are a greater value to somebody's project than anyone with expertise in only one of those fields could be.
Well put. The standard practice is to hire a scientist and a developer, both with deep expertise, and have them work together. For a successful collaboration, it's obviously desirable for them to have some cross-disciplinary skills or experience. Ultimately, you're still primarily doing either development or research.
I did move from physics to becoming a SWE. I could put the knowledge I gained doing 3D rendering and GPU compute used for visualization and simulations in my academic jobs on my CV, and get a job as a SWE that way. Later I moved to another job where I could use my physics background to help develop a new sensor.
As for how to market yourself: first you should convert your academic CV to one that is suited for the type of companies you are applying for. Unless you wrote something that ended up in Nature or some other super high profile journal, companies typically don't care about your publications. What they do care about is things like: can you communicate well? How well can you organize things on your own? Do you handle stress well? You did a PhD, so the answer to those things is yes, you just need to write that in your CV in a way a company recruiter/interviewer understands, even if they themselves are not from academia. So you don't have two halves that belong to different resumes, you are just one person and you just translate your resume to the "language" that your prospective job provider speaks.
Finally, your list of skills does not need to be a perfect match for what a company is looking for. Of course, there needs to be some overlap, but as long as it means you can pick up new things quickly, it will be fine. That and being a good fit for the company's culture are the most important things.
I did not start out with a unicorn role, but in I found ways to apply my physics background in my current job.
Depends on what aspects of your scientific training you want to re-engage with. Do you want to be writing & publishing, giving talks, doing experiments, or building predictive statistical models? And what kind of software do you want to continue writing? Application development? More full-stack, with both backend and frontend? It is indeed hard to imagine places where you can find a strong mix of both.
If you want to mix earth sciences with development, you could look for positions on the Google Earth Engine team, or check out weather companies that do R&D like Purple Air. I imagine there’s plenty of software work mixed with earth sciences in the oil, gas, and mining industries; aviation & ocean shipping; hydroelectric, solar, and wind power maybe.
Being an earth sciences researcher is highly likely to involve writing software, whereas the average SWE role is not likely to need research, so my instinct would be to say just look research roles. Do most of today’s earth sciences researchers not spend a lot of their time at least writing statistical software in Python or R? My brother’s an anthropologist, and over the last decade his job has become more and more writing software to process datasets and do statistics.
If you’re just looking for a scientific mindset and a role that does experimentation, many companies (especially growing startups) have data science departments that, at a minimum, drive A-B testing experiments. Occasionally you can find applied research positions that are listed as just SWE roles, but those might be hard to find - I’d start by asking academic departments for leads.
A PhD means you can do novel research. As a full stack developer what novel subject(s) did you explore? That is the middle you are missing.
A big part of the problem is that you were spending time with tech stacks and frameworks. These have almost no practical utility value aside from attaining employment in a low skill area of software. I am saying that as a former 15 year JavaScript developer. Instead use your research background to solve real problems faced by businesses and users that you can measure.
Top-tier hedge funds are always looking for PhDs with engineering background, it’s a great combo of doing original research and being able to productionalize it
Make a list of the most interesting companies / areas you want to work in from a scientific perspective
Cold call or get introductions to their R&D leaders (principal researcher /director / VP). While connecting to something they or their company did, ask for a coffee meeting or phone call to learn more about their company and how it works.
Use this to Network network network. At some point a job will appear with interviews. Chances are good it’s with a good manager as they’re the ones taking time to build good teams and talent.
this is quite close to my boss's experience. he was an ecology major and phd in geography. i think you probably have about twice the software experience he had before merging the two
his application is quite simple and repeatable: optimizing field measurements through apps. or more simply, really good forms and reports. we focus on forestry but have been able to repeatedly repackage and adjust our software for clients who need to go someplace, fill out a form, and then report on that later and/or submit it to some unique system (etl stuff)
a phd proves you mastered a language and knowledge of process applicable to communicating with subject matter experts. youre certified in the scientific method. even when my boss doesnt have direct experience in a specific field, he can make an analogy to other client or phd work. clients are confident you can meet with members across their team to plan, implement, and test software to optimize their workflow without much hand holding
another thing: he does a lot of talks. after a few talks now he's asked all the time and one of ESRI's first calls for an alternate at conferences. a lot of this is the phd title. if you dont loathe public speaking too much than this can open doors to conversations with clients, professional partners, or institutions developing new tech
You are special. There are lots and lots of "software engineers" in the world. Very very few can bring scientific experience and knowledge to the job. I might look for a developer role in a large university project where they need programming skills and scientific rigor. Or a R&D person in a large software company or the government . These kinds of jobs aren't listed on Indeed or Monster. Attend conferences related to your field (don't attend the talks, hang around in the lobby and chat with people). Reach out to professors in your university or your field.
All the Best!
The reason is that you are not a Computer Science PhD. But soft skills (such as storytelling, sense of ownership, etc.) can still be passed down
It's a bit ironic that the "soft" skills are becoming the hard skills nowadays. A lot of the AI buzz these days is around PM's, Data Scientists, etc. who now have the tools to code "well enough" and are attractive due to their people skills and/or other skillsets.
Not to say this is an objective analysis, just observing the subjective trends.
I keep the two halves separate.
I was a studio recording engineer for about 7 years. I switched to software, and now I work in industrial global logistics. Job attributes I optimized for over the years: insulated from manufactured stress, autonomy, control over working hours, good relationships with my boss and coworkers.
Have you looked at data science / analytics companies such as Kantar?
I haven't done it myself but know a few people who did. They were all on the academic track and just made it happen and supporting their respective labs as postdocs. With an allowing or aligned professor I think it's very relistic in academia. From there you might find overlapping industry opportunities down the line. And I guess you have to be OK with pushing the envelope yourself.
I don't think it's at all as rare as I see other commenters say. I don't know earth sciences specifically but I'd be surprised if there is a STEM field where a strong SWE expertise isn't an asset you can put to regular use in research.
https://us-rse.org/jobs/
Some examples: machine learning scientists and engineers; quants and (quant) developers.
In either case, you're primarily either a developer or a scientist/researcher. Unless you're at an early stage startup or in a principal/managerial role, chances are your time is better spent deeply focusing on one area rather than both. Either putting the system to production or doing research. A lot of the time, these tasks can be carried out in parallel -- while one person is carrying out research, the other can be improving the system.
I feel like my scientific training is going to waste
Your training is a sunk cost.
It is also the source of soft skills.
Not easy, but I have a friend who did this by reaching back out to his old professors and colleagues, figuring out what they needed, and ended up doing a swe project in his old lab and built that into a consultancy which does tech partnering for science.
Apply to the research labs of the big tech companies. Both aspects will be valued.
It may be harder if you want to do only earth sciences, but if you're open to many areas of research, then the FAANGs will probably take you.
It’s there, in data science or data analytics positions.
I'm in much the same boat - however my SWE pivot was when I attempted to commercialize my PhD research along with my advisor. We had a startup for a few years and then got acquired by a global company. I now manage a team of SWEs and coordinate with SMEs in technical fields to make sure that our scientific software products are great in both areas. These roles exist, but probably not commonly as a straight hybrid - may have to lean into one and use the other as a differentiator/value-add. For me, I think I got here by caring about the customer experience first - which takes "whatever it takes" - software and science both. I have to be an evangelist for both of these things but only as a means to a common end, which is to help the end users expand their understanding and abilities with applied knowledge.
Maybe try finding a software engineering job at a place that also uses your scientific expertise. You may be able to find or create opportunities there. The position might not exist, but you can maximize your chances of something coming your way that needs both skill sets.
Do you have a CV for more context? Work in a more academic setting is always highly context dependent, as you know.
Chances are, there are a handful of labs, somewhere that could benefit from the overlap, but finding them is like finding the needle in the haystack.
Have you tried talking to someone at places like ESRI?