interesting machine learning / data mining jobs in the industry?

What are some interesting machine learning and data mining jobs in the industry? I am currently working as a quantitative financial analyst (quant), but I am really interested in machine learning algorithms and I decided to make a switch into an IT company, which uses machine learning / data mining. I have previous course background in machine learning, I just don't want to end up doing something which is not relevant to the business side of revenue generation.

For example, I know Amazon is working on collaborative filtering algorithms (ranking problems), which suggest items to the user, which the user might be most interested in. While these teams are needed, I think they provide a marginal impact to the company. I think some deterministic dynamic programming algorithm can do almost as well, in terms of getting users to buy stuff that they see. It's almost as if some IT companies have researches do machine learning just because other companies are doing the same, not to lose the market edge so to speak. I also heard that some data mining jobs are really removed from reality – one gets stuck cleansing and manipulating data, not getting to new algorithm development.

On the other hand, there are companies which directly use ML algos to generate profit. I heard that some insurance companies mine data for patterns, like matching driving characteristics to the payment schedule / spreads in driver insurance: the algorithm directly computes market spreads from user data. Another example is speech recognition – advances there can directly generate profits for the company, because the company beats the competition with a better product.

So I guess I am looking for examples of jobs which one can land where ML has a direct impact. I don't have a PhD, but work as a quant model developer at a top bank, so I have experience building statistical models, and like I mentioned I have ML / statistics coursework from grad school.