[hbar]

I have a hard and interesting job. I do navigation & autonomous control systems for large mining vehicles. A couple of notes...

1. You want to do R&D. Developing new things is fun; maintaining existing things is boring. However, "getting in" to R&D positions is difficult without #2:

2. Domain knowledge. We almost never hire based on programming skill alone. Programming is a prerequisite, but specific expertise (guidance, navigation & control systems in my case) is the real value you need to bring. Graduate degrees are one way (but not the only way) to move in this direction.