You seem to have a great skill set. You are likely going to have to bend it quite a bit to fit the job though. Unless you are very lucky, the employer is going to want to use just some of your skills doing something relatively boring, but with a good salary.
Moving to Zurich or Basle is obviously better for you but employers will expect you to be under the same roof if you are newly married. Get ready with answers for that question. Renting a room during the week, etc, as you are committed and like working long hours...
Geneve wise, there are a few small hedge Funds/Trading shops that would want Matlab and C++, possibly with Java these days, for financial modelling, risk, etc. Might sound a bore bout could be interesting. Basel will likely be Pharma related, Zurich financial and insurance.
Really? These seem like vague descriptions. I think you need to describe your experience in how you applied these; e.g., who needs this in what ways? Are you looking for work in R&D, computer graphics, product development, Business Intelligence, etc?
If you have worthwhile skills and expertise that someone needs, the language can be secondary. I don't know of anyone who works in these fields who doesn't primarily speak English. Kind of hard to discuss some of these things in Swiss German.
I have a very similar background as you (PhD in image analysis, machine learning, computer science...).
Now I am doing something very different from that.
And I am very happy with what I am doing now.
This is what I learned from my past job searching experience in Switzerland.
Just remember the following:
- Your background is very specialized.
- You are limiting yourself in a very small country. You are not in US.
Then you should know what you should do:
- Enlarge your possibilities. Use your imagination. Apply for fields and job titles that you would never think you will do (or you would never think they would hire you to do).
And most important: patience. During my last job search it took me ~6 months and ~40 CVs before securing a permanent job and I admit that rejections and no-replies are discouraging, but do not give up.
Above are my thoughts exactly in a nutshell. Go for jobs that only have ONE of your skills, C++, or Python or Matlab. Short term contracts are a fantastic way to get in. Firms desperate for a quick short term techie fix in that language will cut through masses of red tape once you convince them you can do it technically, whatever the field. Look at jobserve.co.uk, select Switzerland, go for contract only. Any job here, using just one of your skills, for 3 months, will get you a reference, permit, track record, etc. For a 3 month contract, battling HR is much less of an issue.
I think those skills would be attractive to High Frequency Trading (HFT) prop trading firms and hedge funds.
These kind of companies usually take English speakers if they have the required specialist technical skills.
You would need to do some google research to find these companies, since they are usually pretty small and obscure and then contact them directly. They don't tend to advertise or use recruiters.
Welcome to the fold from a fellow newbie and jobseeker. I like what you are doing already - especially the ones I've quoted above. Here's a couple of more things you could try:
Google yourself. Do you like the results? Your LinkedIn profile and web site should be at the top. If you have a common name and there are many results who are not you, you could change the name in your different profiles. Not completely of course but add a middle initial or something that makes it unique. That way you are in control of what Google returns. You could create a professional Twitter account where you tweet about interesting topics in your field. If you write a new blog post on your site you can advertise it in a tweet. GitHub is a great place for code samples. It serves as a version control system for you with the added benefit that others can see your work. Promote your GitHub account somehow with your other accounts. Follow interesting companies and recruiters on Twitter. Occasionally do a search with #careers #Switzerland or #jobs #Switzerland. Find out which hashtags are relevant to your field. A surprising amount of job ads will turn up. You can use Twitter to contact the people or companies who tweet their positions. Consider getting a LinkedIn Premium account. Sometimes you can get a free trial for 30 days. The premium jobseeker account lets you contact people even if you are not connected. Use this wisely as you only get a certain amount of InMails you can send per month. Another benefit is that in the job listings you can sometimes see how you compare to the other people who have already applied. It also displays the skills and education that people in the company typically have. One more benefit is that you get a more complete view of who's viewed your profile. That way you can track your success after you contact someone. It's a good way to measure the interest generated by your profile. Have you already networked with recruiters? This can be really powerful. Check job ads on LinkedIn, see if the contact person or poster is from a recruiting agency. They are usually happy to connect with new people so you can do it even without InMail. Just remember to write a short intro and absolutely do not use the standard "I'd like to connect with you..." line. After you've networked with recruiters, arrange a meeting with them! I did this when I was visiting Switzerland and it was incredibly helpful. I got a lot of good tips and we had a great discussion about different opportunities. Having met the recruiter face-to-face also gives you a huge advantage over other candidates who just send emails and CVs. Remember that networking is a give and receive game. It's all about helping others so always think how you could help the people in your network. Even the little things count. Other job networks you could monitor are freelancermap.ch and Xing (sort of German LinkedIn). Those two are nice little channels to have on the side but in my opinion LinkedIn is the name of the game. You need to constantly polish and update your profile and keep adding things to it. Especially in the tech field. So keep on doing that and you will see the rewards.
I'm certainly no expert on your field but my current employer deals a lot with data, its analysis and presentation. From that I've noticed that one analysis language that seems to be quite popular is called R. Look that up if you haven't already. If you have time, why not learn a bit about Hadoop as well - your programming background should help with that.
I think there is a demand for data scientists everywhere. I don't have any statistics of the Swiss market but I do remember seeing many data scientist or related job ads. Some companies might not even know they have the need for such a role.
If you PM me your LinkedIn profile address I'd be happy to connect with you. I can also check if the recruiters I know have anyone who know about data science and at least forward you their contact details.
Lastly, don't give up. I started looking in October and only now things look really promising. My situation was a little bit different from yours and I had the luxury of time on my side for once. I did see many suitable jobs but only recently applied for one that was really interesting. When you feel you've found THE ONE it's much easier to present your case. You'll automatically have more confidence and will get a huge amount of momentum from that.
Best of luck!
P.S. That was a bit of a long post but I had a great day today and wanted to share the love.
Looks like you've got pretty much everything covered. Keep doing that and something will surely turn up. Hopefully that list can help someone else as well. I didn't know half of that stuff before someone else told me.
One thing you could consider is to look at requirements of ETH or EPFL start-ups. These are normally stretched for funding and appreciate a skilled software person who can help them. This could eventually lead to not only a job as the start-up gets funding but would also enable you to spread your risk by trying to support multiple start-ups since they often have part-time requirements.
Tech start-ups in Switzerland do have a remarkably high rate of survival (90% over 5 years), so are different from the SFO start-up scene.
Actually I did this as well I went through this list ( http://www.epfl-innovationpark.ch/community/companies/ ) and I found companies related to my field and I sent them email and my CV, but unfortunetly just two of them replied back and they told me they don't have open position at the moment.
Thank you for you message I will look in small hedge and financial funds as well.
Thank you for your message I graduated two years ago and After that my work in related to image processing and machine learning so now I looking for a job like image processing and machine learning, computer vision, data scientist, business analyst, data processing, data management.
"Enlarge your possibilities. Use your imagination. Apply for fields and job titles that you would never think you will do" can you give me some examples that what type of job I can apply? I just looked for a job related to my background because my works experience is in this field on my CV! How do you cover unrelated job to your CV? for example I love to be project manager but I don't have experience in this field so I don't apply!
I would appreciate if you could give me more information,