With this understanding of academia, you are perfectly suited to doing software development for them, because if you think there is "less politics" in academia, you are being foolish.

Academia is notorious for politics, especially around tenure and grants, scholarships, etc.

Publication politics are just a small part of that, but even there, working out which name goes in what order of the authorship of the paper is political.

Academia is not more notorious for politics than a corporate job, in my opinion. I've done both. Academia tries its very best to be meritocratic if anything. There is of course some degree of politics, it is inevitable, which was the point I was trying to make.