During the #100DaysOfMLCode challenge I was going through the Computer Vision Udacity nanodegree and I had the opportunity to learn a lot while doing it, I complemented the nanodegree with other computer vision courses and books and while doing it I also did some research about computer vision jobs, and this is what I came up with:
How can I get a job in Computer Vision industry?
Work on your own Computer vision projects, the best way to show your expertise is by showing what you have done rather that trying to convince others by talking about how much you know. So create something and share it with the world, post code in Github public repositories, or blog about your findings in Medium.
You can work on projects with gadgets like the AWS Deeplens or if you are into hardware why not try something with the Goole AIY Vision Kit. Maybe buy a Raspbery Pi and some servos and do your own miniature Self-driving car!, document the process and share it online!
Attend to events like meetups, conferences or study groups related to Computer Vision, Deep Learning and related fields, good old in-person networking will definitely increase your chances or getting a job in the industry!
Another way to increase your chances of breaking into the computer vision industry is collaborating with non-profits that are in the field, or why not offering free mentoring?, you can gain a lot of experience by teaching what you already know to others who are getting started with it.
I have also saw mobile developers who are working with computer vision optimised for mobiles (iOS/Android), which means the algorithms used must be really optimised to run fast on mobile devices and avoid draining the battery.
So be creative, see on what fields computer vision can be applied, cross check your current skills with computer vision and see if you can find a good match.
How do I search for computer vision jobs?
While searching for “Computer Vision jobs” might give some results, chances are there are a lot more offers that you won’t find with these keywords.
You should also try other keywords like for example: Machine Vision, robotics vision, Image processing, Image Analysis or Image processing, or search for skills instead of job titles, like image feature extraction, or more technical keywords like Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM), HOG, ORB and so on, be creative!
Computer Vision applications
Computer vision can be applied to many fields in the real world, a big field it which Computer vision is being used a lot is medicine with image analysis, identify lessons or diseases and much more.
Self driving cars is also a growing field making use of computer vision from detecting a pedestrian to slow down, detect cars to know when to switch lines, detect traffic signs to adjust speed, stop, and so on.
There are other known applications like text translation or image recognition, from general recognition for example to detect a bolt, a cup and a mobile on a table to more specific stuff like to classify the species of insects or type of flower on the image.
Other interesting fields like hand recognition to translate hand language or detecting emotions and so on, I’m sure there are so many more application and future applications to come in the near future.
This is a very fast changing field, with new algorithms and papers being published every day, so make sure to stay up to date by reading what is going on in the field in a daily basis.
Where to start looking for a Computer Vision job?
Here are some basic links where you can start, but don’t forget to do some more google searches for computer vision jobs!