Absolutely. It just requires an environment where other folks are building, maintaining, and adapting data infrastructure to new needs -- e.g. a large company

Absolutely. It just requires an environment where other folks are building, maintaining, and adapting data infrastructure to new needs -- e.g. a large company with a decent data engineering investment. Also, in those specialized roles, a statistian with an advanced degree is likely to get more leverage. So I think it's smart for undergrads to work on being "unblockable" In a variety of environments so they can build experience - which is the spirit of the standard CS undergrad there.