Do you have to jump right away? You could, for example, work up your skills in development by doing freelance projects on the side while keeping your current j

Do you have to jump right away? You could, for example, work up your skills in development by doing freelance projects on the side while keeping your current job. I recommend guru.com as a decent marketplace for this. You'll have to do a little more work separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of projects there (and good lord is there a lot of chaff), but there are decent, well-paying employers to be found. Not to mention that the freelance marketplaces give you a nice URL to highlight your feedback from clients; this can actually be better than a CV to show that you can do the work. Once you have some experience, it's a much smoother move to go from development contracting to full time development; you might even find that one of your contract employers wouldn't mind hiring you full time.