So for those of you who don't know, for the last handful of months I've been doing deep learning related R&D at the company I'm working for. As someone who stumbled into this industry due to an interest in the subject and a company that had a use for it, I have some advice for people here who might be interested in pursuing a job in the field.
First of all, you'll never have to worry about being out of work. Deep Learning is incredibly hot right now, and it's a fast growing field. The core idea behind convolutional neural networks goes back some time, but it was only in 2012 that this field really began when a convolutional neural network won an image recognition competition for the first time. We are now seeing big-name companies scrambling to acquire deep learning start-ups.

I am interested in this subject, but how do I learn?
- Get familiar with Python and Numpy: https://cs231n.github.io/python-numpy-tutorial/
- Optionally study subjects listed as prerequisites for the Stanford cs231n course: http://cs231n.stanford.edu
- Take cs231n (lectures materials)
- Optionally seek out study material for deep learning frameworks such as the udacity tensorflow course
If you are in a company that wants to get into deep learning and you are able to choose the tech, don't assume that tensorflow is the right tool for the job. There is a lot of hype around tensorflow and from an outsiders perspective researching what to use, it looks like the way to go. In reality, there are a number of deep learning frameworks all with their pros and cons, and it really depends on the task you are trying to solve with deep learning.
What companies are a good fit for a handmade programming advocate?
Disclaimer: I don't work for the companies I am listing here, don't know what it is like internally
You want to check out Nervana. These guys are crazy. You'll notice they were acquired by Intel last year. Their "neon" deep learning framework is currently the fastest around. These guys looked at CUDA and said "nah, we need more performance," and reverse engineered nvidia cards/drivers to hand tailor optimized assembly routines for their framework. They also are building some crazy hardware. NVIDIA is another good option. We think of NVIDIA as a gpu company marketed towards gamers, who historically have driven that industry, but these days it is deep learning that is driving innovation. NVIDIA now describes themselves as follows: "NVIDIA is the AI computing company. The GPU, our invention, is the engine of computer graphics and GPU deep learning has ignited modern AI."
This is simply my perspective after being immersed in the subject for the past ~3 months. Hope it is useful information for anyone interested in the subject and looking for a job.