How do I reach a place in my career where I can be tasked with, or otherwise undertake, a project as ambitious, long-term, and uncertain as rewriting SQLite in Rust?
Most people who end up in such places, whether the cURL guy, the SQLite guy, or the Linux kernel guy... they tend to get there by self-starting. No one is going to pay you to do that at first.
Some folks, like these SQLite in Rust guys ("Limbo"), appear to have started academic. Academia is one such place where slow work on longshots is funded.
I don't think I'm going to quit now and go back for a doctorate, but I can self-fund my own projects. My primary requirement is focus.