Cosmology/Physics and programming

[julz]

Hello everyone,

I currently have a Master (M2) in computer science and been working as a C++ programmer in the video games industry for 3 years, in Paris, France.
However, I don't really enjoy it anymore as I don't feel like it's being much "useful" and
the place is not that friendly.

I've always been really interested in cosmology and physics but I never felt like I had what it takes to
become a good physicist. However, now I would like to work in the domain, at my level of
course. I would be ready to study more to get up-to-date.

Do you have any idea of what kind of job I could find which would be interesting for a
programmer, and at the same time, a bit helpful to the scientific community, which
wouldn't require that I start new studies from scratch ?

Thanks.

 

[JDGates]

There are a fair number of programming-oriented jobs in astronomy, though many of them want a good physics/astronomy background; sometimes even a PhD. Here are a couple of currently advertised examples:

http://members.aas.org/JobReg/JobDetailPage.cfm?JobID=26440

http://members.aas.org/JobReg/JobDetailPage.cfm?JobID=26441

I don't know much about these kinds of jobs, though it looks like they follow about the same hiring schedule as research jobs, meaning that this isn't a good time of year. But you might spend some time looking back through the AAS Job Register archives to see what else has been available in the past.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

Rather than academic research you might also want to consider industrial research. I have seen programmers employed in academic (physics) departments without much physics experience but it doesn't happen often. In industry you might have a better shot of getting a project-based job where you can angle in some physics work.

 

[twofish-quant]

Do you have any idea of what kind of job I could find which would be interesting for a programmer, and at the same time, a bit helpful to the scientific community, which wouldn't require that I start new studies from scratch ?

Try to get a job at a company that does visualization software. Also if you have any experience with GPU programming, that's something of a hot topic right now.

Something you can do to get a feel for this is to download/compile/run something like IRAF or Mayavi2.