Ask HN: How can I transition Data Scientist – Engineer?

I'm a Data Scientist from an academic background in AI with 4 years experience, working mainly in geospatial analytics, with some basic DL (and a lot more cookie-cutter import sklearn style ML). Lots of spark & bigger datasets. However recently I've started to feel limited by my future options in DS, and have realised I actually enjoy building things more than I enjoy tuning models and playing around with data. I want to transition to more of a dev role perhaps via some kind of ML Engineer position, but I'm not quite sure how.

I think it's definitely doable- i wouldn't want to claim my engineering skills are up to a fully professional standard but they are definitely better than 90% of the other DS people I've worked with. In past roles in small companies I've had more of a wide ranging role and have written APIs to serve model predictions, written tests, worked with CI/CD etc. I think given a couple of months in a dev role I could get myself up to scratch. It's just getting that role that could be difficult. I think there may potentially be opportunities in my current company to transition to a more Data Engineer style position but it would probably mean a big salary cut and the projects in the pipeline don't sound that thrilling. Anyone made a similar transition or wants to share their thoughts?