Keep going. More side projects, more interviews (with startups). If you get a "resident" offer to work your way into fulltime, take it. Maybe the pay isn't idea

Keep going. More side projects, more interviews (with startups). If you get a "resident" offer to work your way into fulltime, take it. Maybe the pay isn't ideal for 6-12 months, but the gratification of building yourself into a legit software engineer should make it worthwhile. My path: undergrad and masters in MechE, learned a little machine learning with matlab in grad school, taught myself python and hacked at AI/ML side projects while working at a startup doing FEA for about a year, eventually got an internship with an ML startup... eight years later I'm Chief Scientist at a near-unicorn AI startup.