ginnungagap

I'm a maths postdoc whose position will end in December 2026, and while I love doing research I want to make sure I'll be employable outside of academia in an intellectually stimulating job just in case. I work in an extremely pure area of maths with no real world applicability, so I want to learn something more useful on the side in the three years I have available. I have some basic programming experience in a few languages, but I never worked on a big programming project and I have no knowledge of what is required in the job market. There are three main things I find interesting in the compsci/software ingeenering world:

- low level stuff and assembly: this used to be a passion of mine in high school, but after I stopped after entering uni do to maths a few years back, I'd like to get back into it, but it seems of dubious usefulness when it comes to finding a job.

- combinatorial optimization: it is mathematically heavy, full of interesting problems and something that I'd like to know more about (I took a course during my masters), but again I'm not sure how requested this kind of knowledge is job wise.

- blender/3D modelling: this is an hobby I've been into for some time, I very much enjoy it as an artistic output (my artistic skills in traditional mediums are nonexisting) but I'm not sure I'd like to turn it into a job.

Because of ethical reasons I want to stay as far away as possible from anything that is insurance, finance or crypto related. I'm not really interested in AI and/or machine learning either.

If you moved from academia to industry and want to tell me about it, or if you have any kind of advice that might be useful I'd be very happy to hear it. Thanks in advance!