Thanks for the concrete example, I can relate to this much more. It seems much harder to know, when interviewing new teams to join, whether this particular kind of skill set would be useful or valued, as opposed to being an expert in some technical niche.
When interviewing, tell the team's manager that you're really interested in working somewhere that you can have a big impact. Ask about the most important projects they have upcoming and about the biggest problems the team is facing, and politely dig into it. Once you are aware what the biggest problems are, you can usually theorize without too much trouble what skill sets are needed.
