(PhD, 2005 in condensed matter)
I left academia after my postdoc and went to work at one of the think tanks in the DC area for a few years. When I got tired of being a government contractor and left to work in natural language processing and machine learning.
Now, I build machine learning software to detect financial misconduct like insider trading. I also built software that helps law enforcement find minors who are being trafficked.
Some of the mathematical and computational methods used in physics are used in machine learning, so it was a relatively painless transition.
I'm also developing some mobile apps in areas where there isn't already saturation.