Translation: Can you be a good assembly line worker, devoid of pride or curiosity and just do the damned job? If so, great, we can use you! If not, please return to academia.
Lovely stuff.
I mean, by all means open up a little boutique data science consultancy that charges three orders of magnitude more for a solution that can't be updated by anyone without a ph.d and only beats an out of the box svm by .1%, where you put your pride and curiosity (your vanity) first. You might even find some suckers to patronize you, but man... I must be misunderstanding you because that is the most clueless and entitled thing I've read in days.
98% of the time data science customers actually just want some basic statistical insights into their data to make better informed decisions. If you aren't willing to help with that, and also can't find a research group to take you in (to work on their projects) and also can't bootstrap your own startup, then yes, stay in academia.
At best you're talking about a career change, at worst you're talking about a watered-down version of your intended career.
The money is good though, that's true.
Not so much. "Wants" as "Thinks it needs", but even then, the amount of student debt suggests that neither of those are entirely true either.
What matters is not how elegant your solution is, what matters is solving the problem. And doing it under cost and time constraints.
An engineer is first and foremost, a person focussed on the end goal, above all else.
You've never met a number theorist.
And you've never met a cryptographer ;-)
That is - things that rather solve a concrete problem (given all constraints, including: dirty data, finite time, understanding the needs of clients) rather that have a pure and beautiful, but utterly useless for practical purposes, theorem to prove.
But sure, tastes do vary.