Not GP, but IME researchers often run big, complex simulations, and often have to care deeply about performance. Correctness, less so, unfortunately. A lot of r

Not GP, but IME researchers often run big, complex simulations, and often have to care deeply about performance. Correctness, less so, unfortunately. A lot of research software is written by researchers themselves with very little understanding of good software development principles and practices, and end up messy, overly complex, and buggy. That said, being a software developer within research can be the best of both worlds. You should be able to demonstrate (using perf tools, and comparing with existing comparable software) that you're squeezing a lot out of the hardware, while being able to construct maintainable, tested software.