Industry and Government Careers

Learn about Industry and Government Careers

  • Browse Jobs on Toast.com, skim the discussion boards at the Versatile PhD, read some transition stories at From PhD to Life.
  • See career possibilities at WeUseMath.org and the SIAM careers brochure.
  • Correspond or talk with alumni online and at the departmental reception at the AMS Joint Math Meetings (JMM).
  • Talk with the Director of Graduate Studies about your interest in industry or government careers.
  • Join the SIAM or INFORMS chapters on campus.
  • Talk with as many people as possible among your friends, family and academic network - many people will help and offer advice if you explain what you want to know. 

Prepare for Careers

Resumes and interviewing:

Technical skills:

  • Acquire basic coding and statistical skills – take some courses on campus at whatever level gets you started. Possibilities include:
    • STAT 200 Statistical Analysis
    • STAT 207 Data Science Exploration
    • STAT 425 Applied Regression and Design
    • STAT 440 Statistical Data Management
    • STAT 448 Advanced Data Analysis
    • STAT 542 Statistical Learning (highly recommended). Theory and proof of popular machine learning algorithms, with practical implementation homework. The end-of-semester project is good for your CV.
    • CS 307 Modeling and Learning in Data Science
    • CS 446 Machine Learning
    • CS 512 Data Mining
    • CS 598 Machine Learning for Signal Processing (topics course)
    • Machine learning courses in the CS department

      For students who need numerical methods:
      CS 101 – Intro Computing: Engrg & Sci (tools course, scientific computing, C, Matlab, Unix/Linux)
      CS 357 – Numerical Methods I (theoretical, Python, Mathematica, Matlab, course for large scale programming)
      CS 450 – Numerical Analysis (theoretical)
      CS 555 Numerical Methods for PDEs

      For students who need programming exposure and not numerical methods:
      CS 125 – Intro to Computer Science (Java, object oriented programming)
      CS 173 – Discrete Structures (prereq for CS 225)
      CS 225 – Data Structures (C++, object oriented programming)
  • Online training options include:
    • “Programming Foundations with Python” and “Design of Computer Programs” at Udacity. These free, self-paced courses are extremely well-structured and interesting. Highly recommended!
    • Free courses through Coursera, EdX, Udacity; search for courses on coding, algorithms, machine learning (e.g. the course by Stanford's Andrew Ng is highly recommended), and data science.
    • Math/coding problems at ProjectEuler.net - form a group with other graduate students to tackle some of the problems.
    • LinkedIn Learning - free to University of Illinois students. Search its playlists under "developer" to find series of courses on topics such as "Learn to Program in C++," "Learn to Program in JavaScript," "Learn to Program in Python" and others.
  • Data science training programs (most charge fees)
  • Software engineering career advice from a PhD alumnus

Internships

Summer internships get you experience and recommendations from people working in industry. Read about past internship experiences of graduate students from our department. Then start applying... 

Internship programs:

  • Inmas  - based at University of Illinois; industry placements.
  • IMSI - based at University of Illinois; scientific lab placements.
  • NSF - grant supplements for internships

Government labs:

  • MSGI - Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship Program (NSF); national lab placements. 
  • National Lab links - apply for full-time and internship opportunities.
  • Pacific Northwest National Lab - internship programs and job board. If you apply, please alert our department’s contact at PNNL, Dr. Emilie Purvine.
  • Sandia National Laboratories - internships and postdocs. Contact Prof. Lee DeVille, so that you can tap into the Department's pre-existing contacts at Sandia. Prof. Lee DeVille is a point person for the institutional collaboration with Sandia National Labs.

Industry internships:

  • Handshake - companies post internship opportunities here
  • Internships.com
  • SIAM internship and career links
  • Job board and tenant directory for the UI Research Park - clicking on each company name gives contact information for the local site manager
  • Networking - talk with students, faculty and your other contacts to help find people with internship experience and companies wanting to hire interns.

Jobs

But remember - submitting resumes online to companies where you know no-one is a low-percentage way of finding a job. Instead, put time into talking with friends, family and professional contacts to expand your personal network. That is a far more powerful means of getting a satisfying job. 

Miscellaneous links