Advice on seeking grad work

Lightnix

Lightnix

Lightnix

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So I'm currently seeking graduate software engineering positions, and it strikes me as though the kind of work I'd like to get into would in general be somewhere where every so often I'd have the opportunity to work on small prototypes and do a bit of research - but most of the obvious roles with large companies all focus on maintaining large applications, which is fine and something I'm capable of, it's just that I think I'd derive more satisfaction from working on something where I have something free-standing to show off once in a while.

That said any suggestions would be welcome - companies working in visual effects or computer vision would be good, also. I quite enjoy the stuff we're doing in AI at the moment, so anything where I could reason about graphs could be good for me. I have a reasonable amount of experience (for an undergrad at least :p) in C, C++, OpenCV, embedded programming, Java and Linux (Gentoo). I also have a technical telephone interview with Google in March (wish me luck!), but due to personal reasons I can't risk not finding a grad position for after university.

So, OcUK, do you have any suggestions? Maybe any interesting startups I might not have heard of? Bigger companies that I might not have thought of (my industrial placement was at an engineering company who produce food processing machines so I'm open to that kind of thing)?

Thanks! :)
 
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D.P.

D.P.

D.P.

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18 Oct 2002
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Google is a good bet but also have a look at Microsoft, Intel, HP, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, SAP,SAS,Ctrix, Qualcomm, Adobe and Apple etc.
You then have all the investment banks and credit card companies that often have good work in the algorithmic side of things.

Computer games have a lot of interest for a computer scientist but you need to make sure you get a gig at a company that actually develops their own engine or does heavy modifications of commercial engines, not just making pretty graphics and level design. Also the industry is notorious for bad working conditions.


There is then all the high-tech companies, things like medical robotics, bioinformatics, genes sequencing. This is by far the most interesting sector to work in IMO. the work requires the highest levels of education (most will have a PhD), but salaries aren't reflective of that unfortunately IMO. I saw job postings for some biotech companies in the Cambridge science park asking for PhD in machine learning/stats/bioinformatics but salaries were only 30-35K salaries, other industries will be paying 60-90k for good engineers with that kind of background.


You then have the video surveillance companies that are now using a lot of computer vision to do things like detect anonymous user behavior, fires, auto-detection of theft, left luggage at airport etc.


There is also some work in automation & industrial robotics, e.g using computer vision to detect defects in parts.

In many industries now they are employing more and mroe sophisticated machine learning to try to predict system/machine failures before they occur by detecting anonymous behaviors. These applications don't work well with black box solutions and require deep domain knowledge so they aren't also open for fresh grads.
 
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