Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

We have a large number of MS/PhD level Math folks in my Data Science group.

Have you considered the NSA or CCR?

Professional societies like SIAM have listings, which you can view to get a rough idea: http://www.siam.org/careers/ . Most of these are academic, but not all. (I think, or at least hope, there's a way to filter/sort.) Most of them may be targeted at PhDs, but again not all.

I'm an academic myself, and a significant fraction of our recent PhD grads have gotten positions in data science, and at least one is now at a pharmaceutical company working on mathematical modeling. The jobs are out there. The tricky thing is that people don't generally advertise for mathematicians, even though a good mathematician may fit the job well.

From my experience, I would offer the generalization that nobody hires mathematicians. Mathematics in society is more of a skill set than a professional title. The most challenging or cutting edge math that could be commonly used is the LINEST() function in Excel. A person who is good at math also has a lot of great skills to offer a company, it is just selling those features and not the calculus.

I started out as a math major, then I transitioned to a double major math AND stats because stats is more applicable. I struggled for a year looking for work (also US immigration sucks, even for Canadians) and ended up in a master degree program in Industrial Engineering. I chose engineering specifically for the word "engineering". I was lucky that I discovered the field of Industrial Engineering at that university otherwise I was headed for a BS in Mechanical.

Continuing formal math education will further limit the kind of jobs you can apply, increasing the level of competition. Even the BS in Math left me with the feeling people saw me as over qualified, lacking regular skills.

Math is super great by the way, just not the idea of being a "mathematician". It (unfairly) causes alienation of your true potential.

My colleague has a 1st class honours degree in Maths from Cambridge university, he is both a mathematician and a software engineer. We work on radar tracking algorithms, for civil and military aircraft in the UK. Developing and/or understanding such algorithms needs highly skilled people who understand Maths; I consider them to be Mathematicians.