To answer your question directly ... a senior engineer MUST absolutely have had the responsibility of taking several systems to production and maintaining it th

To answer your question directly ... a senior engineer MUST absolutely have had the responsibility of taking several systems to production and maintaining it there for some period of time. Ultimately there is just a whole area of experience that you cannot short circuit. While we laud genius programmers who brought something to the world (eg: Bram Cohen of bittorrent fame), there is a lot of luck involved, and ultimately no one is an island, there is a lot of supporting work to make something truly successful and widely adopted. Good luck in your job hunt, but my best advice is to have patience, be humble and realize that your experience is a starting point, and you have much to learn.