This is really not true. Every software-focused startup that's ~30 people and growing need someone to guide the way for the less experienced engineers. System

This is really not true. Every software-focused startup that's ~30 people and growing need someone to guide the way for the less experienced engineers. Systems design is a part of every software engineer's career, but experience there can be pretty limited. (Most people try to simplify the field down to 1-person projects, because they started programming with 1-person projects. That very quickly fails to scale, and needing to make 15 1-person projects work together is a common demand.) So you need to learn it "on the job", and you need someone around to help. That's exactly the position that the OP is looking for, and looking around at job listings, it is quite in demand.