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Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

#51

Post by jll29 »

dpe82 wrote: post #9

You write that you currently work full time at Microsoft, a company with a large developer tools division that actively develops several language compilers. Have you reached out to managers in those groups to learn if they have (or could create) opportunities that match your interests?

You could switch to academia if your Ph.D. period generated some good publications. This means a downround in terms of salary, but trading that cash against freedom to pursue your own ideas. If you are already teaching voluntarily on the side, that is a signal that it could be the career for you.

If you are open to working with grammars & parsing algorithms also in non- deterministic ways, you could consider a research career in NLP.

Finally, you could apply to work for a specialist compiler company (JetBrains, Green Hills Software etc.).

Re: Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

#52

Post by georgelyon »

MLIR (https://mlir.llvm.org/) is a quickly growing compiler toolkit which attempts to synthesize the learnings of LLVM and currently powers compilers for programming languages, machine learning and circuit design (https://github.com/llvm/circt). and there are a ton of companies with real employees working on it (including Microsoft) and MLIR is at the core of Chris Lattner’s new company, ModularAI. I’d recommend taking a look at it, there are a large number of ways to get involved and a number of paths from contributor to employee.

Re: Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

#53

Post by simonh »

ShamelessC wrote: post #41
google234123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t get this post. They are working on a phd in compilers and work at one of the best software companies in the world. Why can’t they just try and transfer?

Yeah they are basically overqualified.

In something as super specialised as compiler engineering there's no such thing a over-qualified.

Re: Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

#54

Post by dataflow »

samatman wrote: post #33
dataflow wrote: post #5

> My research is about attribute grammars. > My goal is to actually use the concepts I spent so much to learn in my PhD in my career. Do you mean you're specifically looking for a job that lets you focus on the grammar/parsing of programming languages (possibly with attribute grammars in particular!)? Or do you mean front-end (or general) compiler development more generally? Because if you specifically want to apply…

You might be surprised.

If you know of any such companies it would be helpful to mention them? Instead of just suggesting they exist but not giving any hint of where or how to find them.

Re: Ask HN: How to get a job as a compiler engineer?

#55

Post by 3ef4e38b »

please apply!

https://jobs.amd.com/job/Santa-Clara-Software-Development-En...

The Company:

AMD Pensando is a leading provider of data center networking technology. Pensando's distributed services platform will expand AMD's data center product portfolio with a high-performance data processing unit (DPU) and software stack that are already deployed at scale across cloud and enterprise customers including Goldman Sachs, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle.

The Role:

This position is for a recent graduate with strong software engineering skills who is passionate about solving complex problems. Our team is working on a compiler for the P4 language targeting a domain specific architecture implemented in our family of ASICs. The compiler is based on open source software such as LLVM and P4C and is architected based on modern software design principles and methodologies. You will have the opportunity to make significant contributions from day one and will be mentored along the way by senior engineers with a wealth of experience. In addition, you will be interacting with both compiler customers as well as the ASIC team developing the target ASICs.

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