[heisig]

I work in academia. My research is about new concepts for parallel programming, especially via runtime optimization and JIT compilation. It was not hard to convince others to use Common Lisp for this - there aren't many languages that allow for metaprogramming at run time. And of these languages, Common Lisp is the only one with decent performance.

As for landing a job outside of academia - my advice would be to attend some of the regular Lisp meetings (See http://planet.lisp.org/, or https://european-lisp-symposium.org/). There is usually some recruiting going on at these meetings. And even if not, you might meet fellow hackers that know about job opportunities.