[bananaquant]

Companies explicitly requiring a PhD is an unfortunate consequence of having too many PhDs being already out there and additionally produced each year. If you have done some interesting work and can get in touch with a recruiter, you can probably challenge that requirement in your case.

If you don't have a PhD, you do have to compete with everyone who has it. But it is still possible to gain an edge on them by simply studying what your prospective employers need. For PhD students, it is actually harder to do that unless their PI is doing something closely related.