https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA
I followed the steps in the installation section then installed nvidia-prime from Arch repos, prime-run works (I set up a custom menu entry of some apps that I want to run with the NVIDIA card) , the Vulkan demo detects and runs on the NVIDIA driver even without running with prime-run (afaik Vulkan does a good job detecting all the GPUs installed), I have the same setup as you do, Plasma with (Intel iGPU + NVIDIA dGPU)
As a fellow developer who recently moved to Arch, it's great, the installation process was a tiny bit frustrating (I did test it first in a VM) but after that it works as intended, I keep my eyes on the wiki though if any issues happen, nvidia driver works well with PRIME too, although I don't use it much (I dualboot for the sake of gaming), if you feel like you need to have even MORE control over your PC than your vanilla Debian or Fedora experiences, I guess Arch is the next step, on a side note, minimal Void Linux installation is very similar to what you get with Arch so in case you used that you already have a taste of what you're getting into, well, plus having access to the AUR :)
Oh also, I'm not sure about MATLAB, but Octave has been shipped as MATLAB compatible (although it haven't been the case for me with some functionalities...) Maybe you'll need a Windows VM if Octave wasn't enough, or maybe it runs using WINE I haven't bothered trying it
Other hosters gaining more popularity, among other reasons, GitHub is owned by one of the worst companies around, I found Codeberg and switched there, now almost all of my projects live on Codeberg, mirrored to GitHub cause I don't expect an employer would follow a link to Codeberg if I solely include it on my CV