Then there are the people building compilers accidentally, like in the <xyz>-as-code space. Infrastructure automation deal with grammars, symbol tables, (hopefully) module systems, IRs, and so forth. Only the output is very different.
And of course the toolchain space is larger than just compilers. Someone needs to maintain the assemblers, linkers, debuggers, core runtime libraries. If you are building a Linux distribution, someone has to figure out how the low-level pieces fit together. It's not strictly a compiler engineering role, but it's quite close. Pure compiler engineering roles (such as maintaining a specific register allocator) might be quite rare.
It's a small field, but probably not that obscure. Despite the efficiency gains from open-source compilers, I don't think it's shrinking.
Then there are the people building compilers accidentally, like in the <xyz>-as-code space. Infrastructure automation deal with grammars, symbol tables, (hopefully) module systems, IRs, and so forth. Only the output is very different.
And of course the toolchain space is larger than just compilers. Someone needs to maintain the assemblers, linkers, debuggers, core runtime libraries. If you are building a Linux distribution, someone has to figure out how the low-level pieces fit together. It's not strictly a compiler engineering role, but it's quite close. Pure compiler engineering roles (such as maintaining a specific register allocator) might be quite rare.
It's a small field, but probably not that obscure. Despite the efficiency gains from open-source compilers, I don't think it's shrinking.