<p>It does depend on the job. If you are making legacy parts, you might not have a lot of cutting edge design work in your job, unless an original design part fails too often or is otherwise inadequate and you have to design a better replacement.</p>
<p>Sometimes, it is just understanding the concept that is necessary for day to day work, but understanding the concept properly in the first place requires learning the math behind it. But sometimes a project at work happens to be similar to a project done in class.</p>