With a background like that you should be doing machine learning if you want to combine science and software. And climate tech is a burgeoning field.
I see many relevant openings in https://www.climatetechlist.com/jobs
Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#52I see you having a unique opportunity. There is a scarcity of strong SWE skills in the earth sciences related industries/businesses. You could refresh your reasons, motivations and interests for choosing earth sciences for your PhD. Perhaps your thesis and research connections reveal further dimensions.
In any earth sciences based work, there would be requirements for either data sciences or AI related processing, improvements, etc. Those are the sorts of areas that you might want to peddle your SWE skills as delivering.
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#53Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#54I succeeded at this. My academic physics career petered out, then I stumbled into an industry role with almost as much physics as I was doing in my quantum mechanics postdoc.
The jobs you're looking for are rare, but they do exist. There must be a bunch of them in this project, for example:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-22/lake-george-earthquak...
In my case, the unicorn factor worked both ways. The job was advertised for a year before my hiking partner encouraged me to apply, and it took a few months more before I did. From that point, the job was easy to get.
In this job market, supply and demand are reasonably well matched; the problem is that the market is very illiquid. Science jobs are rare to begin with, and people stay in them for decades, so vacancies are even rarer.
On the one hand, a programmer at my company who was interested and capable of switching to optics could have had my role by asking for it. On the other hand, if you joined the company as a programmer, you would have had to wait 5 years for an optics role to come up.
So my advice is to stay in touch with your friends from the earth science days, and expect this to take a long time. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought AGI was 2027. Given it is a week from 2026 we only have 1 year left right?
We don't need AGI to replace the median dev
From.
> SWE profession won’t really exist
To.
> we don't median dev (another vague term)
bunch of goalpost moving statements.
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#56Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#57Allow me to suggest Research Software Engineering - https://society-rse.org/careers/rse-stories/ US Organisation - https://us-rse.org/ UK (but also worldwide) - https://society-rse.org/ There are RSEs who specialise in Earth Science, e.g. https://socrse.github.io/geoscience-sig/
This is what i immediately thought of too. Some more links;
Research Software Engineers - https://researchsoftware.org/
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_software_engineering (checkout References/Further Reading etc.)
Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/ResearchSoftwareEng/
PS: LinkedIn shows me a bunch of jobs with this designation (though many seem to be AI/ML related).
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#58Allow me to suggest Research Software Engineering - https://society-rse.org/careers/rse-stories/ US Organisation - https://us-rse.org/ UK (but also worldwide) - https://society-rse.org/ There are RSEs who specialise in Earth Science, e.g. https://socrse.github.io/geoscience-sig/
That's amazing! Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#59As a hiring manager, if someone shared a profile of a person with a PHD in earth sciences and 8 years of “full stack” experience I’d immediately assume they were a generalist with surface level familiarity and no mastery or depth in any one area. I’d then look over the profile trying to disprove my assumption. Lacking a very strong signal in mastery of something, I’d pass on the profile. Only at small scales are full…
> As a hiring manager, if someone shared a profile of a person with a PHD in earth sciences and 8 years of “full stack” experience I’d immediately assume they were a generalist with surface level familiarity and no mastery or depth in any one area.
I learned that the hard way. I used to think my science background as an asset but I stopped mentioning my science background after seeing people's reaction in interviews.
Re: Ask HN: How do I bridge the gap between PhD and SWE experiences?
#60Have you tried talking to someone at places like ESRI?
Good suggestion, my skills overlap a lot with what ESRI does actually. Thanks!