Would doing machine learning during my PhD disqualify me from becoming a professor at a statistics department? I would like to call myself as a statistician; I have been in statistics programs for seven years now (four year undergrad, two year master’s, one year PhD). I always thought that if I become a professor after my PhD, I would be hired in a statistics department.

But lately I started to doubt the above statement. My PhD research field is machine learning, more specifically I am trying to improve performance of the existing neural network model called “Transformer”, which is commonly used in natural-language processing (NLP) in data science. I don’t know how math-intensive my PhD dissertation will be, but I think my research is going in a direction that I won’t be publishing a lot of (math-intensive) papers in journals like JASA or other strictly statistically oriented journals, but instead I will be publishing in some of the deep-learning journals and attend a few machine-learning and/or computer-science conferences to present my work. My research involves a heavy Python programming, and I see my research as more of data science than traditional statistics.

If I keep on pursuing the current research road that I am on, would this eventually disqualify me from getting employed at statistics departments, since my research does not involve a heavy (traditional and math-intensive) statistical theory? Will I have a better chance, for example, to get hired at an engineering or computer-science department than a regular statistics department with this kind of research background? Would it be possible for data Scientist like myself to be hired at a statistics department? The thought of not being able to get hired at a statistics department amazes me since statistics is the discipline that I studied throughout my entire academic career.
I will be publishing in some of the deep-learning journals and [at] computer-science conferences...My research involves...Python programming, and I see my research as more of data science than traditional statistics... 


You seem to be leaning towards a career in computer science, rather than mathematics.


  If I keep on pursuing the current research road that I am on, would this eventually disqualify me from getting employed at statistics departments, since my research does not involve a heavy (traditional and math-intensive) statistical theory? Will I have a better chance, for example, to get hired at an engineering or computer-science department than a regular statistics department with this kind of research background? Would it be possible for data Scientist like myself to be hired at a statistics department?


You are surely making youreself more desirable for hire to computer science departments, rather than mathematics departments.


  The thought of not being able to get hired at a statistics department
  amazes me since statistics is the discipline that I studied throughout
  my entire academic career.


If you're satisfied with the path you're on, why not embrace a change?

Perhaps you can find a computer science department that's like a mathematics department, or vice-versa.