Since moving to the US and giving up my permanent academic position in NZ, I have been increasingly concerned with finding a more suitable job. This academic hiring season I applied to around 70 traditional positions, almost all in mathematics departments and computer science departments. This effort resulted in zero positive response from Math, and a few Zoom interviews with CS, one of which led to an on-campus interview day. However no offers were forthcoming. I put in a lot of work to present myself as a good candidate, which I believe I am. But it seems that the system is not efficient, or I am a much worse candidate than I think, or senior level hiring is really very different from the much more common junior hiring, or … (?)

In any case I felt the need to move forward, or at least sideways. I have, after several twists and turns, been appointed as the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Notices of the American Mathematical Society. This is an important community role that I hope to make my own as I build on the work of predecessors. It is roughly a half-time  position (at least that is what the pay says, and I hope the timesheets also reflect that, but I will spend as long as I need to do an excellent job). I already know it will be a lot of work and require me to deal with potentially conflicting opinions and interests. As an independent contractor with the AMS, I will have all the fun of self-employment tax and other IRS requirements.

In order to be working full time, I will also be moving at UMass Amherst from a visiting position in mathematics with no prospect of permanence to a (part-time) teaching faculty position in computer science with some prospect of permanence. The two new roles are not equally exciting (yet) but they are each important in their own way and I hope to contribute strongly in each. I will be teaching something new, namely probability for CS students, a course which I strongly but unsuccessfully advocated for at Auckland.

I will still be seriously looking for a more traditional professor role, but I will be able to focus on a much smaller number of job applications to places that seem a very good fit, assuming that this new situation is as acceptable a lower bound as I predict. Wish me luck!