Dear Early Career

I’m on the job market but I’m not sure what kind of job I want. Where can I find job ads with a variety of types of jobs?

—Ambivalent

Dear Ambivalent,

This is a broad question, but we’ll do our best! In our careers we have typically used MathJobs as our primary resource to navigate the academic job market, and while it performs a great service to the community, it is by no means the only resource. We’ll mention some relevant sites that have proven useful in getting some people we know into jobs that they love, and which might help you start your research on jobs.

First of all, the aforementioned MathJobs (https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs) is sponsored by the AMS and aims to support job applicants with advanced degrees in mathematics, and employers seeking mathematicians. The success of MathJobs has led to the development of AcademicJobs (https://academicjobsonline.org), which seeks to provide a similar service for other areas—it is currently run by Duke’s Math Department. AcademicJobs posts listings in a much broader range of disciplines, and you may find positions related to (for instance) data science or machine learning which are not listed on MathJobs. Most employers on both MathJobs and AcademicJobs are universities and major research labs.

While it is fair to call Mathjobs the primary resource for research-focused academic positions in mathematics in the US, other job sites list many more teaching-focused positions, in addition to some research-oriented positions which are not on MathJobs. Certainly, it is worth checking out the MAA sponsored site (https://www.mathclassifieds.org/jobs/), The Chronicle for Higher Education jobs site (https://jobs.chronicle.com), and the HigherEd jobs site (https://www.higheredjobs.com/). These sites also host many nonacademic jobs from employers looking for people with advanced math degrees.

In terms of understanding what jobs in business, industry and government are available to you, two great sites are the Erdos Institute (https://www.erdosinstitute.org) and the BIG Math Network (https://bigmathnetwork.org) (and, of course, LinkedIn). You can find out a bit more about the Erdos Institute in the July 2023 EC article by its cofounder Roman Holowinsky!

Additional important resources come from job boards hosted by other professional organizations. We’d like to mention here the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Career Center (https://jobs.imstat.org), and the SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematicians) job board (https://www.siam.org/careers/job-board). Also well worth checking out are the job listings at the National Association of Mathematicians (https://www.nam-math.org/job-announcements) and the Math Alliance (https://www.mathalliance.org/job-postings.html).

Good luck with your job search!

—Early Career editors

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