Physicist looking to change careers; difficulty level: Rhode Island

April 22, 2015 6:28 PM

I need help evaluating different career paths as I plan a move to Rhode Island; I have a PhD in physics. What careers should I be looking into and what skills should I develop to have a very good chance of landing a job in under a year?

-moving to RI (probably Providence area) for personal reasons
-PhD in experimental physics from a top school
-currently working at a startup doing R&D in electrical engineering in a nearby city
-looking at a career change that's agreeable both to me and to the RI economy

More about me:
-I care more about doing interesting work than making lots of money; interesting for me means working w/smart, engaged people on a technical challenge
-I'm considering (so far) programming and data science
-I've taken 1 online course in data science & found it interesting; this could be a logical extension of my physics skill set
-I have lots of scripting experience analyzing data (think Matlab/Python), but no 'proper' programming experience
-I realize I will likely need additional training
-My wife can support the family for up to 1 year, but I'd want a job after that
-I have been networking and applying for jobs for about 8 months (had a couple of successful interviews but then funding fell through)
-I like my current job but working remotely is not an option

Constraints:
-I'm not interested in teaching/professor jobs (I tried teaching as a postdoc)
-no defense related jobs for various reasons
-I don't want to commute to Boston every day (assume a northerly limit of 30 minutes from Providence)

Questions
1. Ideas for career paths to explore?
2. What specific skills will give me long-term prospects in the RI economy? For example, what programming languages should I focus on?
3. have you made a similar switch and can you give advice on the process?
4. Is this a realistic goal?

posted by geekBird to Work & Money (9 answers total)

I know a few physicists-turned-data-scientists, so that path is definitely viable.

As for programming languages: different languages are standards in different fields --- for the data scientist jobs, definitely learn how to write stats analysis in R, and learn the standard scientific python kit: numpy, scipy, matplotlib. There is a pretty standard package called scikit_learn that could be useful, but there are several redundancies in R. If you venture into finance, the standards are usually matlab for exploratory stuff, c++ for implementation, though some firms use java. Most importantly, work your SQL up to a level where you'd consider yourself expert. Underneath all of the R and python coding you'll do as a data scientist, there is a SQL database in some form or another.
posted by chicago2penn at 8:03 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Some physicists leave the field to become quants. Another option is bioinformatics, which is data-heavy. If you're good at statistics or data modeling, you'd probably excel at either. The software doesn't really matter — you'd pick up whatever your coworkers use pretty quickly, if you don't know it already, and Matlab and Python are in use by these two fields.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:34 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Have you looked at the non-teaching job postings of the local universities, especially Brown? Read through appealing job descriptions and see if you have the background for any any of them.

If your wife is, by any chance, starting a job at one of the colleges or universities in the area they may have a program for helping spouses find work.
posted by mareli at 5:59 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not clear to me from your question whether you want to stay in Physics if possible. And are you interested in programming per se, or for the paycheck?

Are for what programming languages to focus on, I'd suggest that you look into FP, functional programming. It's said to make one a better programmer regardless of language. Some of the leading languages in FP are Haskell, OCaml, Julia, F#, Idris, Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Clojure, Erlang.

Here are some links:

Haskell is Useless

Scientific Computation and Functional Programming (and more of his papers here).

Learn Physics by Programming in Haskell

Is haskell suitable for quantum computing?

There's a group at Brown that's into Racket:
https://cs.brown.edu/research/plt/
posted by at at 7:20 AM on April 23, 2015

I've known a few masters and PHD-level physicists who could code in my time working in tech circles in Rhode Island, and they're all working as defense contractors. I think you're going to have a hard time landing something if you're not willing to work for a defense contractor or commute up to Boston. The Providence tech scene is is not huge...
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 7:28 AM on April 23, 2015

Yeah, the southern end of the state has a bunch of defense contractors because Electric Boat (submarines) is there (well, and in Groton, CT), as well as all the Navy stuff around Newport.

Brown University is in Providence itself; there are other higher ed. institutions throughout the state, but they're the best.

There is a bunch of small tech companies here in Providence, bit a lot of folks living in Little Rhodey commute to the grater Boston area. (*shrug* It's a quality-of-life decision that I myself made 10 to 15 years ago. :7) Any time you start looking for jobs around RI, there will be this giant gravitational pull, to the north: Boston & Cambridge & Somerville.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:54 PM on April 23, 2015

Also, the east coast is a dense market for higher ed IT consulting, so if you learn something like Oracle E-Business Suite or a web framework or one of the bigger .edu packages (like Banner), there's always work. And a lot of it is remote, too!
posted by wenestvedt at 12:57 PM on April 23, 2015

I think an educational institution is your best bet. For a straight programming job, perhaps an insurance company. They do a lot of boring, non-challenging programming. Don't ask me how I know.

A commute to MA does not have to go all the way to Boston.
posted by SemiSalt at 1:23 PM on April 23, 2015

You may want to check EMC Corp in Hopkinton, MA. They are all about data storage, big data and cloud computing. A great company to work for and accommodating to working from home.
posted by tman99 at 5:44 AM on April 24, 2015