[josephdviviano]

Like the rest of my story I got super lucky and I don't think it's a repeatable path. I had done a small "research project" for course credit with a professor, but I don't think it counts for much and it didn't go anywhere. The way I got into the MSc was by emailing every single psychology / neuro professor at a university looking for a summer volunteer position! I was taking non-degree coursework at one after being unemployed for a while in order to upgrade my CV enough to get into a program. Back then I think I was aiming to get into something clinical. A new prof. at the time asked to meet with me for the position and then suggested at the meeting that I do a MSc with him. I think he was having trouble recruiting because the rank of the school was not very high. Luckily, he was also super smart and taught me a tonne. That was a research MSc. The professional MSc I am in now is quite new has more emphasis on coursework and not on machine learning research. It's a way for the school to teach a lot more students about deep learning without professors needing to dedicate too many resources to individual student supervision. There is no expectation to publish or anything like that, although there are always ways to publish if you are interested.

If you want to get involved in research projects (which I do think helps you land more creative jobs) I would suggest working your hard-core software dev background when you pitch potential collaborators. You would be very surprised to see the quality of code coming out of some researchers because there is little incentive to be a good software engineer in academia. The normal way to participate in research is to be in a PhD program but there are many other ways so long as you can work closely with people who come from a more traditional research trajectory.

Are companies in geospatial or government aerospace groups hiring people with your skills? Might be a first step?