This is indeed a viable path if it's available. I get some sort of strange fulfillment out of integrating things, or adding features where none were expected...

This is indeed a viable path if it's available. I get some sort of strange fulfillment out of integrating things, or adding features where none were expected... and most of what what I want to touch affects developer happiness, so of course my tech lead approves :) Fast-forward and in the past couple of years I've written Jenkins plugins, ugly glue code in Java (but that made everything else so much easier), a VS Code plug-in, the list goes on. It's done well to keep me from getting antsy. It also enabled me to move without getting let go, because of my unique value add (I think)