> Science perhaps? Pick a field and you can probably find a lab or project in need of research software engineers. I've been in the industry a long time and OP

> Science perhaps? Pick a field and you can probably find a lab or project in need of research software engineers. I've been in the industry a long time and OP's realization that most jobs in tech are useless or so-called "evil" typically occurs pretty early on. This would indicate to me that OP is probably still fairly young and has a lot of discovering to do about themselves and the industry itself. Interesting work for some definition of interesting is everywhere. One should consider themselves lucky to work on very interesting (read: cutting edge) work at any point in their life. OP is probably a talented developer but not yet at the level any company will accept them as a research engineer, which tends to be a terminal position on the level of the C-suite. If OP is looking for this type of position it explains why every job they've ran into is web 3/crypto/evil startup stuff. Those are really the only people young, relatively inexperienced but highly ambitious, engineers can get a taste of that environment without going through the corporate crucible for a decade and a half or more.