Sounds like, “I’m looking for someone in the majors who is interested in switching to playing minor league ball.” If you had a fantastic developer who you could use to build new product that drives revenue or use them to write tests for the current product, which task would you put them on? Which task would your CEO want them on? Which task is going to get the most visibility in the company and offer the best opportunity for promotion? If the org had a huge issue with quality, I may temporarily put them on QA to get things organized and structured, but after that I’d want them on new product or refactoring current product for faster velocity.
A business can exist without tests, but tests can’t exist without a business. I love and appreciate great QA people, but I also believe there is a hierarchy and you can’t ignore it. You can offer a path up, either to manage QA or a future switch to dev. You can offer to pay more for QA. You can integrate dev and QA. But I don’t think you can realistically get the same caliber developer at the same level in pure QA as in pure Dev without it being detrimental to retention and the business. You can try to create parallel org charts for the two roles, but the hierarchy will still form.