Chances for Global Talent (exceptional promise) under peer review

[misc_airspace]

Hi everyone,

I am a research scientist working in one of the FAANG companies in the US. I did my undergrad and PhD in the UK (both at Oxford/Cambridge). I've worked a while for my current employer but got a bit fed up with the Bay Area & because of personal reasons I want to move back to the UK, either via an internal transfer (my company has a large research presence in the UK) or, if that's not possible, finding a new job. I got my eyes on the global talent programme, and since I will most likely be working as a researcher in industry rather than academia, I don't think any of the fast-track routes would apply and "peer review" (in my case through RAEng) seems to be the only choice. I've not seen many data points on how high the bar is through this route (unlike the US EB-1 route, where tons of data are available), though, so I think it's a good idea to gather wisdom from Reddit to see how likely I'll be granted that visa, before more commitment like getting a lawyer. Any advice is extremely appreciated!



About me:

- integrated masters & PhD with scholarship in AI/ML (Oxbridge)

- 1-2 yr work experience at one of the major US tech companies (think Alphabet / Meta / Amazon) in California

- ~20 papers (first/co-first author in half of them); around 15 published in top conferences (NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/ACL etc. if you are familiar with AI/ML venues) & journals -- note that in Computer science in general, conferences are the primary venue in contrast to journals. I have also served as a peer reviewer in these venues (reviewed >50 papers).

- ~400 citations according to Google Scholar, although half of the papers are published fairly recently (<1 year) -- hopefully citations will catch up later.

- Good chance of getting a recommendation letter from some big guy (think a Fellow of RAEng level) at my old lab in the UK.

- Have been and will still be active in research (publishing papers, etc.) even though I'm working in the industry.



A side question is: it seems that getting sponsored by RAEng would allow me to get ILR in 3 years even under "exceptional promise" -- would that be true in my case as well, even though I'm not conducting research in academia?