RS at openai, deepmind, google or others: does this position require PhD, or a master with publications suffice? I want to switch from sde to RS, but I can only find time to do a master on the side at max…
The only people I know who moved from swe to rs are the ones who kept publishing even if it was not a part of their job description.
Have you considered a Research Engineering role? Wouldn't require a masters necessarily, and you can learn a lot about research on the job, including publishing papers if that's important to you.
You need to know people for the RS path or need to be a world renowned researcher with 5k+ citations. Phd is not a must but a research gap is a big deal. The longer you work outside research the harder it becomes to land a research job.