I'm an ME and work in a simulation software company as a researcher. All of us researchers are PhD Mechanical/Aerospace Engineers (tbh I'm the only without a Ph

I'm an ME and work in a simulation software company as a researcher. All of us researchers are PhD Mechanical/Aerospace Engineers (tbh I'm the only without a PhD, only a Masters here) and spend our days reading papers, implementing MATLAB/Python prototypes of numerical methods, and passing that over to the software engineers who implement those in the product with C++. The C++ software engineers are all from traditional engineering backgrounds (cannot remember their degrees though, sorry), as you do need the more "advanced" Calculus to understand our stuff. I think this is where you should be looking at - simulation/engineering software companies - if you have the chops. Good luck!