My general impression is that a well paying, full time compiler position is quite competitive. It's relatively niche, and there are a lot of good engineers who

My general impression is that a well paying, full time compiler position is quite competitive. It's relatively niche, and there are a lot of good engineers who would love to work on compilers all day rather than the typical drudgery (it's one of the purest CS pursuits). I'd suggest scratching your itch by working on an open source compiler in your spare time. And with significant experience under your belt, you may be able to network and get that dream job one day. Source: I know people on both the Scala and Swift teams and this was my experience. Everyone wants to work on these teams, and it was generally seen as the most enjoyable work. You pretty much had to have good connections/solid OSS contributions/relevant PhD to get a placement on these teams. I imagine it's the same at MS.