[D] ML researcher looking to switch to a product company.

Reddit r/MachineLearning / 4/5/2026

💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep Analysis

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Key Points

A machine learning researcher at a deep-tech company feels frustrated by long (2–4 year) project cycles and wants to switch to a product company with faster iteration and customer feedback loops.
The candidate worries that for senior interviews at customer-facing product teams, hiring processes heavily emphasize practical experience with A/B testing and product experimentation.
They ask how to credibly convince interviewers despite lacking direct hands-on product experimentation experience.
The core tension is translating deep research and data-science work into measurable experimentation, iteration speed, and business-impact narratives expected by product organizations.

Hey,

I am an AI researcher currently working in a deep tech company as a data scientist. Prior to this, I was doing my PhD. My current role involves working ok physics related problems and the project life cycle could be 2-4 years and the change comes in my company very slowly. The problems are quite interesting but because of the slow pace of development, I find myself getting often frustrated. As a byproduct, I don’t think that I am learning as much as I can.

Because of these reasons, I want to move to a company where the development cycles are short and you have the flexibility to iterate and test quickly. Ideally a company which directly interacts with customers, like uber. The problem I am facing is that in the interview processes, a lot of these companies require you to have a lot of practical experience with AB testing type of approaches, especially in the senior roles that I am applying for. I think I can bring a lot of the table but I just don’t have much practical experience with the product experimentation. How do I convince people to give me a shot despite that?

submitted by /u/wonder2man
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