Stuck in a niche I love (radar + embedded ML) or play it safe?

Posted by Huge-Leek844@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 13 comments

Hello all,

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my career and would love to hear from others who’ve been in similar shoes.

I work in a niche: radar signal processing, combined with embedded machine learning. It’s highly technical, intellectually satisfying, and I get to work on complex problems.

However, there are maybe a dozen job openings a month in my country that fit this exact niche. It’s great when you’re in it, but part of me wonders if I’m over-specializing. If my current company pivoted or folded tomorrow, I’m not sure I’d have a huge set of backup options that value exactly this mix of skills.

I’ve also built up more “standard” embedded skills—C++, bare-metal, RTOS, Linux drivers, etc. The kind of skills where you could jump into automotive, medical, consumer IoT, aerospace, you name it. It’s tempting to lean harder into that space, even if the work isn’t always as technically “cool,” because the job market is way more fluid and flexible.

Curious how others have approached this tradeoff. Have you specialized deeply in a niche and been glad (or burned)? Or did you pivot toward broader skills and find it was the right move?

Would love to hear your stories and advice.

Thank you.

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samerai@reddit

Niches are great. I don’t se radar going away any time soon. And imagine AI slop in embedded space

Infamous_Ruin6848@reddit

I was building GPGPU-acceleeated vision applications on OpenCL for embedded more than a decade ago. It's only natural we can now run AI slop and later on marry with robots running at least local inference.

metarobert@reddit

Whatever you do, make sure you have an escape route, or more than one. Be able to do any sort of work, or push the leading edge, or be prepping for a move to leadership (not a real option for me), or… expect your career to be less and less under your control.

I moved from systems engineering, to QA dev, to SDET tool and framework dev, to DEVOPs (almost a circle!) Some luck involved, but I was always willing to tackle what few others would even when it might fail. I learned far more that way.

HaMMeReD@reddit

T shaped skills.

General knowledge about a lot of things, but deep knowledge in one thing.

Make that one thing "embedded and ml" and you are probably pretty solid for the future.

Helpjuice@reddit

Start your own company, start your own company, start your own company!!!!

I have some very niche skills in a different field to what you have listed, and starting my own companies was the best thing I could ever do. I still work for other companies, but I don't have too anymore and is done just for fun.

Restricting yourself to working for others only when you have extremely high-end in-demand skillsets and capabilities is grossly limiting your career potential and income potential.

Playing it this safe is actually hurting you. Not sure where you are, but if you are really good at what you do you need to look at doing the following immediately and then taking it to an attorney and accountant to get it setup.

Figure out what your countries international trade laws are.
Figure out if what you are working on and the import/export restrictions associated with them.
If you were to sit back and think about what you have done over your entire career, what products could you create out of that vast amount of knowledge and how long would it take to get to market.
Look at providing commercial services to companies that operate out of your country.
Look into partnering or providing services to large defense contractors as a sub contractor.
Look into what it would take for you to become your own prime federal contractor down the road in your country.
Look to see if you could establish a business entity in the USA to provide your services in country.
With what you know today what services could you provide a defense contractor right now on contract.
If you were able to travel would you be willing to travel internationally to meet the demands of x contracts?

a_slay_nub@reddit

Where are you that that's a rare skillset? That's like half the job reqs relevant to me in my area (near US military base)

Huge-Leek844@reddit (OP)

Portugal

angrynoah@reddit

If you're doing something you enjoy, don't mess with it. It's hell out there.

nomadicgecko22@reddit

defense, sensor fusion, embedded ML, are all in demand and niche skills that someone with chatgpt/claude code can't just vibecode. as u/Human-Star-4474 said 'diversify skills cautiously. maintain niche expertise while gaining broader experience'

gronlund2@reddit

Spent lots of years working on software for non destructive testing applications, learnt a lot.

Wasn't a problem to pivot into medtech at all technically, but recruiters and managers had a hard time believing I would fit as they saw me as working in "industry" not "medtech"

Not sure where these classifications come from but they're bullshit.