r/Physics • u/RoundElephant5876 • 6d ago

employed physicist

Those of you who have completed research physics and are currently working, how is it, what exactly do you do, are you satisfied, do you work inside your country (and if yes, which one) or abroad, online, how difficult was it for you to get your current job?

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u/Zealousideal-Pop9078 5d ago

Did a PhD in applied optics, wrote one application and have been working in development of a large optics company in Germany ever since (8 years now). I develop metrology systems there which involves doing requirements engineering, writing simulations and evaluation software in Matlab, and troubleshooting production issues. I like what I do.

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u/RoundElephant5876 5d ago

That seems so cool! Do you know if your company has any online workers or do you have to live in Germany?

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u/Jealous-Elephant-260 5d ago

do you earn as much as in demand "tech" jobs ? Just curious

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u/xrelaht Condensed matter physics 4d ago

Just so you know, salaries in Europe are nothing like they are in the US. A senior software engineer in Germany makes ~€100k, which is less than the starting salary for one in the US. The flip side to that is most skilled professions make similar wages: an optics engineer there has similar salary scaling, whereas they top out around half what a senior SE makes in the US.

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u/htybar 4d ago

Do you mostly work with fiber? And what is your work physics like just maxwells and optics or you have to work with qm, qft and other theoretical physics from time to time?