I've been considering freelance work because I want to travel, but I'm not sure whether there's a market for what I'm interested in.<p>I like solving algorithmic problems. I enjoy it so much that I do it for fun. I know there are plenty of people offering web design/development service, but about algorithm design and development?<p>To clarify: I'm looking for work where I get to work with a lot of companies that do (hopefully) interesting work. My specialty is taking a problem specification and providing a solution by designing an algorithm and then implementing it for the company. I wouldn't be opposed to helping the company integrate this algorithm into their system and providing follow-up service and maintenance, but I don't want to develop entire products.<p>I have a hard time staying focused on anything for more than a few weeks, so I'd like to get it, do something new and interesting, and then get out.
If you do a pretty targeted job search, there's a decent number of these kinds of jobs on oDesk (full disclosure, I work at oDesk).<p>Machine learning:
<a href="https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=machine-learning&st=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=machine-learning...</a><p>Hadoop:
<a href="https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=hadoop&st=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=hadoop&st=0</a><p>Data Science (as you'll see, not everyone knows what this term means):
<a href="https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=data-science&st=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=data-science&...</a><p>Algorithms
<a href="https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=algorithms&st=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.odesk.com/jobs?nbs=1#filter/?qs=algorithms&s...</a>
I've got a startup at <a href="http://zombal.com" rel="nofollow">http://zombal.com</a>. Occasionally we have algorithm work coming through but it's not something that you could live off (at the moment). I'm still figuring out the market and determining the best way to connect companies with people like yourself.