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Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

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Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#51

Post by ltratt »

Jhsto wrote: post #44
ltratt wrote: post #14

I lead a PL/VMs/compilers research group and the number of organisations interested in hiring people in this area keeps growing and growing. Now, that's not to say that there are ever going to be hundreds of thousands people working in this field, but it turns out that lots of organisations have realised they have pressing language needs. It varies all the way from those wanting to make mainstream language implementa…

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

I don't pretend to have a total picture of all the possibilities, and there's quite a bit of not-always-explainable variation in what I do know, but I think it would be fair to say that people in this field are quite some way from going hungry. It tends to be better remunerated than a typical software gig but it's certainly possible to earn more in AI/ML. A lot also depends on whether you want to be a "normal" engineer or are willing/capable of taking on managerial responsibility.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#52

Post by pm215 »

Google234 wrote: post #6

Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Google, Red Hat, and MSFT are all currently hiring complier engineers. Experience with LLVM is probably useful for many of those opportunities. https://us-redhat.icims.com/jobs/75775/software-engineer---l... https://nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NVIDIAExternalCareerSit... https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJob/Id/764855/Software-Developer...

Arm is another company that is frequently and currently hiring compiler engineers (mostly for UK Manchester/Cambridge; looking at the current listings it's largely looking for people with some experience at the moment but there are also some intern/student placements.)

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#53

Post by bregma »

I work at an embedded OS company on the entire command-line toolchain (as opposed to the GUI-based IDE). That includes maintaining existing and doing new compiler ports.

We always have a great deal of trouble finding qualified candidates to fill open reqs. We find few are interested in this sort of technology, everyone want to either work on cool new applications (like self-driving automobiles) or high-profile web-based stuff. Our entire department is either waiting for retirement or a heart attack (whichever strikes first, and retirement is not a realistic expectation).

tl;dr compiler engineers are in demand and they work on compilers.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#54

Post by bakery2k »

Jhsto wrote: post #44
ltratt wrote: post #14

I lead a PL/VMs/compilers research group and the number of organisations interested in hiring people in this area keeps growing and growing. Now, that's not to say that there are ever going to be hundreds of thousands people working in this field, but it turns out that lots of organisations have realised they have pressing language needs. It varies all the way from those wanting to make mainstream language implementa…

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

I wonder if it's similar to embedded software development (which also requires "rigorous working methods"). Salaries for embedded are generally lower than for web development because there's much less demand for embedded skills.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#55

Post by tachyonbeam »

Jhsto wrote: post #44
ltratt wrote: post #14

I lead a PL/VMs/compilers research group and the number of organisations interested in hiring people in this area keeps growing and growing. Now, that's not to say that there are ever going to be hundreds of thousands people working in this field, but it turns out that lots of organisations have realised they have pressing language needs. It varies all the way from those wanting to make mainstream language implementa…

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

I worked as a compiler engineer at a big tech company in SV and lived very comfortably, was able to put a lot of money aside. The demand outstrips the supply, it's hard to hire qualified people, so the salaries have to be high to attract those qualified.

Tangentially, I think the supply is small because compiler engineering is not a fashionable field of study. Everyone wants to do "AI" these days.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#56

Post by gravypod »

exikyut wrote: post #49
randomthrow4w4y wrote: post #17

I work at Oracle Labs where GraalVM (graalvm.org) is being developed. I think this is one of the most exciting places to be right now for compiler engineers, and people with the right skills are certainly in demand. Some things that came out of this: partial escape analysis, the Graal JIT compiler, SubstrateVM, native-image, several Truffle language implementations (JS, Ruby, Python, LLVM), IGV for visualizing differ…

Basic/naive/stupid question that I've been genuinely curious about for a little while now: What are the real-world motivations behind reimplementing the noted languages on top of Truffle? These projects are frankly incredible - hundreds (thousands) of total man-years of work - and all to _re_build something that already exists. I'm missing context that I don't know where to look for. Is there anywhere I might look on…

Communicating or interfacing massive legacy code bases together. You can write python code and call it from Ruby code in a slightly, but livable, way.

Also eventually I'm assuming there's some plans to compile these other languages with native-image. In my eyes native-image is Java's response to golang: reasonably sized small binaries that are perfect for containerization and quick to elastically scale up/down (startup time).

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#57

Post by logcrater »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #55
Jhsto wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

I worked as a compiler engineer at a big tech company in SV and lived very comfortably, was able to put a lot of money aside. The demand outstrips the supply, it's hard to hire qualified people, so the salaries have to be high to attract those qualified. Tangentially, I think the supply is small because compiler engineering is not a fashionable field of study. Everyone wants to do "AI" these days.

I hope am not being pushy but could you please say how much you made and in which company? Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#58

Post by chrisseaton »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #42
exdsq wrote: post #40

There's some work happening in the blockchain space because people are starting to create their own smart contract languages. I don't know of any other space seeing so many 'new' languages being created in such a short space. I've seen jobs advertised by teams developing Cardano, Tezos, and Ethereum. It's worth looking at their project pages, seeing which teams work on it, and then checking their careers pages. I kno…

Are these compilers or mere transpilers? Not sure if I am being sarcastic or serious.

A transpiler uses much of the same technology as a native code compiler.

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#59

Post by logcrater »

ltratt wrote: post #51
Jhsto wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any comment on the salary in these positions? Are they higher than for the average software developer, and if so, by how much? I am wondering since to my experience, the application and development of logics and verification procedures to be used in programming language development requires vastly different and more rigorous personality and working methods than in your average web developer gig.

I don't pretend to have a total picture of all the possibilities, and there's quite a bit of not-always-explainable variation in what I do know, but I think it would be fair to say that people in this field are quite some way from going hungry. It tends to be better remunerated than a typical software gig but it's certainly possible to earn more in AI/ML. A lot also depends on whether you want to be a "normal" engine…

Do you mean that compiler engineers are getting paid shit nowadays?

Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?

#60

Post by azhenley »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #38

Since there are people in the know here: How would you go in the adjacent field of language design? I would be super interested in doing research on the mental load of different programming languages (and different representations of information). I.e. put a hacker in a fMRI and let her solve tasks in different languages.

People in academia are doing research in this area. Let me know if you want a PhD, I am hiring :)
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