In my opinion there are two kind of jobs out there: 1- PhD required for real 2- PhD required but not really ;) Let me explain what I mean for 1, PhD is require

In my opinion there are two kind of jobs out there: 1- PhD required for real 2- PhD required but not really ;) Let me explain what I mean for 1, PhD is required because they expect you to publish your work. And I have to say unless you did a PhD you might find it very hard to publish in top tiers conferences, understand the review process and of course be familiar with the state of the art (mandatory citations or your paper would suffer terrible reviews). Or they need the new hire to be a PI on some NSF/DARPA fundings and it's expected that the PI has a PhD. Case 2, startups or big corp like to show off PhD in their work force just to impress customers/investors or they genuinely look for someone that can narrow down a problem, read about it and solve it. PhD have track record of that to get their degree but a talented engineer could achieve the same. My personal advice, is stay away from jobs 1 as you probably will have a hard time fitting in. However you can definitely ace the interview for 2 and show what your capable of.