tldr; get out of your niche (rut) and head to where the demand is. I'm a battle scarred IT veteran with lots of practical experience as well as research and te

tldr; get out of your niche (rut) and head to where the demand is. I'm a battle scarred IT veteran with lots of practical experience as well as research and teaching experience in academia. Based on my experiences ... The core of your problem is that you are insisting on doing work in "your niche" for which there is little demand in your marketplace. Cool jobs are badly paid. It is because there is lots of competition from people like yourself who want to do cool stuff. What you desire in your life is perfectly reasonable. You just need to change tack and target a technical area with lots of demand and thus better pay and conditions. Academia, even if you gain a PhD is never going to be lucrative compared to business enterprises.