See if you can't find a position in satellite telecoms. Having an understanding of both SE as well as RF is a nice sweetspot in that industry, especially in the field of ground station work.

While Amazon is mostly its online store and AWS, they do have teams that do robotics and other hardware related things. I'd suggest taking the job and learning as much you can for the first 2-3 years while keeping an eye open for opportunities for an internal transfer to a team that is working on a hardware project that interests you.

Random points to consider:

If you love learning, and are interested in the topic, stay in school. You'll not be able to focus as heavily when working. I've tried many times since I've left academia, and I've resigned myself to "OK, these topics are too heavy to learn with a job, need to focus on some other topics".

For many (most?), academia is the only place to pursue one's passion and feel satisfied.

Twice in my career I've gotten a job that aligns with my passions. Both were the worst jobs I've ever had. There's a lot more to a job than the technical side. I've found sexy topics often attract jerks, and the teams tolerate brilliant assholes. They often underpay. And since the job is challenging, keeping your job is tough (i.e. you may have to be more brilliant just to keep the job vs one that pays 50% more). Management doesn't respect you because it's a niche area and there are plenty of other people graduating who want to do "cool" stuff.

Also, this may not be universal, but if you do go the "passion job" route, find out if they do a good job mentoring juniors like you. Most of the ones I've seen that were filled with PhDs saw people below them (including those with an MS) as grunt labor. They'd hand off all the boring work to them, and ensure they alone got to do the fun stuff. They didn't care about mentoring/teaching the junior folks.

My best jobs have been the technically boring ones (paid well, very collegial coworkers, bosses that respected you, etc).

If you didn't like your time in Amazon, I would say "Don't bother" - unless you really, really want it on your resume and are a lot more focused on maximizing income than pursuing your passion.

> Should I stop bitching and be grateful for a role most other students at my university would want?

You should go for what you want, not what others want.

(Having said all that, be warned that I could write a separate comment on why not to do a PhD :-) ).

Everybody is different, so it's hard to give advice when you don't know a person's priorities.

If you have the means to focus on getting a masters in a speciality field that you have a strong inclination for, then just do it.

Earning good money doing something you dislike is a golden trap. For most people, a high income leads to an expensive lifestyle. Once you get used to that lifestyle it is near impossible to cut back and follow your passion later.

When you were looking for internships, did you not find any ML/robotics ops? I would have thought that a startup and doing a masters part-time would be a good option. Just need to hustle a bit more. Research potential startups, etc.