As I look back at my career, vs what I want to do vs what I see in the news, I feel there is a massive disconnection. I don't see a clear way for me to jump into work that aligns with my interests. Perhaps it's a limitation in my mind, and there is evidence here of people who have managed to successfully jump into a tangent industry.
My situation, in gist, is that I’m a 35-year-old who started late in tech and has been working CRUD-type work at a financial services company for the past 6.5 years. I've been passively/actively looking for two years and haven't been able to get the kind of job I want.
In my little world, the only realistic thing I can do is prepare for interviews to join companies like Amazon or Meta. But for these companies, I genuinely admit I don't have the talent or LC skills to crack a senior SWE role. Going in at SWE II would mean a step back in my career. I also can't quite join startups since the feedback has mostly been, "we are looking for more early-startup experience or folks who have done more 0-to-1 projects."
The type of work I really want to do is related to MLOps infrastructure, distributed systems, or role in AI space that does not involve building models, because I think those are exclusive folks with PhD. I can only think of doing are courses or certificates. E.g. pursue CKAD, Azure Solution architecture certificate or Google ML Crash couses.
My main issue is that I'm doing all this based on feelings, without any concrete anecdotal experience. For example, speaking with my friend at MSFT, his approach to switching to AI is to literally apply internally to an AI-specific team. Unfortunately, I don't have this luxury.
What can I truly do on my own to pivot and jump into the AI industry to get hands-on experience with things that matter and are in demand? My goal the feedback from here will allow me to understand to what to focus on in year 2026.