Niche Consulting Lateral Options

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to figure out what a reasonable lateral would be should I ever need to. I'm in an unusual position, otherwise I'd just rely on Google/other posts here. I like my job but I want to make sure that I have options if I need them and if I need to be preparing in some way unrelated to my current role outside of work, that I'm doing that to set myself up for a successful career.

I'm a consultant and allegedly soon to be project lead (pretty much the same as an engagement manager). However, I don't do the typical MBB consulting work that would make lateraling easier. The work I do is probably best described as "data science". I spend a lot of time programming and creating machine learning models and performing basic to sophisticated data analysis. That said, I'm not proficient enough at any of these to be a software engineer or data scientist, nor do I want to be. My role really is to solve problems I haven't seen before and that I often don't have a detailed idea about how to solve. This means that I sometimes have to learn how to use a new tool, which is how I ended up programming in the first place.

I'd position my skills as learning really quickly, analyzing and solving complicated problems, being unafraid of being over my head. I think I have a strong resume to back up that pitch.

Where could I go with this background? Really interested in fields that have a high "kill it and be compensated well" attitude.