5 years experience at one of the leading cloud companies (AWS, Azure, Google) will very likely put you right in that market. Nothing special to join. It’s very hard to enter directly as an SDE-3 (or equivalent) without having experience at one of the big companies. I think in 8 years at Amazon I’ve only seen 1 person doing that. With a phd and some work experience you can likely join as an SDE-2 and get to an SDE-3 level in about 5 years. The exact timing depends a bit on the opportunities you’d find, but I’d say that’s definitely very realistic. I can put you in touch with a recruiter from Amazon if you’re interested. My email is in my profile.