Being into functional programming helps quite a bit I think. In particular, category theory seems to nest well and illuminate some complicated uses of polymorphism and continuation passing style transformations.

Categories are also a useful abstraction/pattern for designing interfaces to libraries. It's sort of a more mathematically flavored version of dataflow style libraries like simulink or gnuradio diagrams and stuff. Gluing together lego blocks and building up pipelines. I have been fiddling around with a categorical interface for solve linear equations which I think is pretty neat. http://www.philipzucker.com/linear-relation-algebra-of-circu...