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Comment by khadgar25 | Hacker News Reader

I do scientific computing i.e. solve partial differential equations that arise in engineering using C/C++/CUDA/OpenCL with some Python/Matlab interfaces for non-specialist scientists to use.

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I do that too. May I ask if you work for a university or national lab or industry and how competitive the pay is? I work for a university and the career prospects don't seem so good for me at this point.

I have a PhD but I work in industry. We have people from national labs usually because of compensation. It's not high six figures but it is pretty competitive especially for the area I live in. I worked in finance for a few years in New York and although the pay was better, living in Manhattan has a way to humble you :)

To be honest, I feel like I really lucked into this job and don't really know many places that employ people like me for solving PDEs in industry but you could definitely try something like quant researcher/developer which will alleviate some of the compensation woes from university and still have aspects of mathematical code to some extent.

Thanks. It does feel the same here. The jobs are quite niche and the pay not so great (comparatively to the demands of the job), and often a Ph.d is required.

I’ve always wondered if jobs like this exist, but I’ve never actually seen a job posting for one. As a developer with a math degree, these kinds of jobs have always been something of a dream for me. Any tips on where to look?

For simulation type jobs where you are solving PDEs for some kind of nontrivial domain: * universities sometimes have scientific programmers * national labs in your country will definitely have some people doing such work * big names in industry, engineering and manufacturing e.g. in the past petroleum exploration companies used to hire quite a few people * boutique consulting firms that you never heard of (you need to do a lot of research in your area to find them) * Mathworks and similar names that develop engineering software

For programming jobs including some math in general, well I'm jumping on the hype train that is ML/DL because the jobs are more numerous and pay better even when factoring in the currently hype.

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