Storage is backbone of the Internet persistence. Just a few quick ideas below. I would keep this "storage" label and invest in some higher abstraction level kno

Storage is backbone of the Internet persistence. Just a few quick ideas below. I would keep this "storage" label and invest in some higher abstraction level knowledge like Ceph, GlusterFS, AWS S3. Also SSDs are ousting HDDs nearly in every on-premises application with hot data. Maybe writing some tooling for massive storage fitness/performance analytics would help you land a niche/job. To understand a new role you would need to learn what problems you can solve for potential employer/customer. Maybe try to apply for eng. position at some Internet giant companies G, A, FB. They often get interested in smarties in other fields. Definitely your career transformation will need a lot of effort and sacrifices if you stay full-time at old place but it is doable. I wish you best.