You could consider a job in Finance researching new trading strategies. While this is certainly very far from pure research, a job in this area can satisfy most of the bullet points listed in the article.
For example, at my current job, I have plenty of time to sit around and think about new trading strategies and no deadline for producing one that makes it into production. New ideas then go through prototype and back-testing stages, and most never see the light of day. This isn't at all considered to be a problem.
The only bullet point that my job doesn't satisfy is the first-- the types of strategies I'm working on simply aren't sufficiently deep to warrant investing years in developing the initial version of any one of them.
For example, at my current job, I have plenty of time to sit around and think about new trading strategies and no deadline for producing one that makes it into production. New ideas then go through prototype and back-testing stages, and most never see the light of day. This isn't at all considered to be a problem.
The only bullet point that my job doesn't satisfy is the first-- the types of strategies I'm working on simply aren't sufficiently deep to warrant investing years in developing the initial version of any one of them.