[qwrusz]

Hi David,

I made a similar move to industry work many years ago. My advice is to clarify what interests you, as data science and machine learning are huge fields. Also "machine learning" is still hard to pin down what that even means these days. If you're willing to start off in a data science role without a heavy machine learning aspect to it, that's very easy; there's tons of companies (startups like Uber and more mature companies like Facebook) that have entire nap rooms of data scientists with PhD's working there and some super interesting data to work with.

If there is a specific area of data science and/or machine learning or other work going on that interests you that you come across, email a PhD at the company doing this work. Many of these people still publish papers at conferences or at the very least have blogs describing what they are working on. Find a company that's doing work that interests you and email the researcher. Don't go through HR. Email the person directly and ask to chat. I found PhD's working in industry to be very receptive to talk to someone qualified and with an interest in the work as they have likely been in your shoes before. Go from there. GL!

[davidmayerf]

Thanks for your reply! It is very down to earth and to the point.