Not the GP and I agree with your broader point that a master's is sufficient approximately 99% of the time, but a few places come to mind: SpaceX, NASA, CERN (is that technically non-academic? I don't truly know), probably certain departments of US Dept. of Energy, things around nuclear power.

They probably don't have high concentrations absolutely (e.g. they're not going to be 90%+ PhDs) but it's probably still several orders of magnitude above your average industry role.

IC design for behemoths like Intel/AMD/Nvidia. AFAIK none of those is gonna let you anywhere near their multibillion-dollar design without being at the top of the field or having lots of experience (>5yrs) already

Is 5 years really the bar for "lots of experience?" I feel like this is a byproduct of current (last 10 years or so) frontend/bootcamp dev mentality that you're a senior engineer after a 6-week course and 2-3 years of experience at a consulting body shop.

Even if you get a PhD your working career is going to be around 35 years. Add 5-10 if you're done after college, and even more if you're not doing college.

I think we need to stop pretending people are senior when they're 10-15% of the way through their career.

Robotics is one such field. I work with tons of PhDs, and self driving car companies hire them like crazy. In certain organizations, you need a PhD to advance as an Applied Scientist. A masters won't cut it.

But that’s my entire point. Taking your example, the bulk of robotics companies aren’t all applied scientists (for that matter in spacex, nasa, etc.). You will have a very small cohort that does the r&d and the rest of the folks executing on that.

The r&d space is really interesting but very selective for obvious reasons. Just a PhD won’t get you in. You will need significant other contributions - eg the right publications in high impact journals, possibly internship with the companies themselves, the right advisor/PI that collaborates with the company, etc.

The team I'm on is half PhDs. We aren't doing fundamental research, we are building a real product. We prefer to hire PhDs as applied scientists (which we distinguish from research scientist) because they are better able to apply and build new-ish ideas from academia. But most of what we do is not novel in the publishable sense. The PhDs I work with are certainly all smart, but aren't the top echelon you are describing.

Any job that is highly research oriented is going to appreciate a Ph.D.

Whether it becomes a practical requirement, or formal requirement, would depend. If it's a high paid position, in a small research group, of an established field, then Ph.D.s are likely to be very important.

If its a position in a large research group in a new and fast changing field, then its likely to be more open to anyone with unusual or interesting promise, but still highly value Ph.D's.

As for fields: research in engineering, finance, economics, device physics, chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals, etc. Anywhere the research involves highly technical knowledge, and a pre-existing track record of original thinking, personal initiative, that have produced objective results, are very important.

"Research" is a thought and project management meta/leadership skill, on top of being highly educated and talented in an area. Ph.D.'s provide the extra time and social context to fill out those skills and demonstrate a track record.

That's true in biology, chemistry, and physical sciences, but less true in computer science.

In any of those fields, and computers science, there is a spectrum.

Deep research areas in computer science would be foundations of databases, cryptography, formal verification, statistical heuristics, core algorithms behind deep learning, ...

Since so many areas in computer science are relatively new, there is generally more flexibility in who might be considered great at research. The field includes many unusually creative individual practitioners who have produced great work without a Ph.D.

But Ph.D.s are still very much in demand and common for research positions in these highly technical, high value areas.