I work in computer science (specifically in embedded software) and had a task last year where I needed to extract the pulse rate from a biosignal by detecting the signal peaks and measuring the intervals between them. Derivatives of the signal can be used for the peak detection, but I honestly did not think about this until a coworker reminded me.

For processing any digital signal, digital filters are incredibly important. When working with them, you will be exposed to polynomials though.

If you are interested in robotics, vectors are also quite important.