Where does one get a job writing actual algorithms and data structures? I actually enjoy that and am pretty good at it. I'm sick of jobs that are nothing but glueing together poorly documented and tested libraries.
Where does one get a job writing actual algorithms and data structures?
Two big areas that come to mind are simulation/mathematical modelling, where you're often crunching data in ways that aren't just textbook examples, and embedded systems, where you often have resource constraints that make efficiency more important.
This doesn't just mean modelling weather systems on supercomputers or writing the control software for cars, though. For example, consider user interfaces. We are increasingly looking for more intuitive input methods using techniques like natural language processing, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and gesture-based UIs. We are looking for more intuitive output methods, such as integrating additional data with real world imagery like maps or the view through a 3D head set or camera. We are looking for systems that learn patterns in their users' behaviour and adapt to provide more likely options more quickly next time.
You won't see much of this if you're just writing simple form-based web front-ends for CRUD applications. A lot of real world software is like that, and it gets a lot of useful work done, but it's mostly pretty mundane, join-the-dots work as far as the programming goes. However, there are plenty of interesting problems out there and we could directly improve the user's experience in new and helpful ways if we could solve them, and much of that work involve developing data structures and algorithms far beyond anything you'd find in an introductory textbook.
Data Engineering, SRE, Production Engineering are really good for that kind of thing. Especially at a larger company, but the truth is those opportunities aren't going to come up that often, you don't want to be continuously inventing your own technology unless you're living on the bleeding edge like Google.
Lots of places, but I would guess finance and gaming have it at the highest percentage. They have the strictest performance requirements so algorithms and data structures end up custom built for the job more often.
