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This comment is dead on. I’m SWE who builds data/optimization systems and someone with this skill set would be a great hire.

Even if you wanted to get totally away from data most any modern system is going to need to interface with data systems at some point. Your skills would be super valuable.

I agree completely with this SWEs who understand data are extremely valuable. It sounds like you have enough hobby experience combined with your current work to get a SWE position. But, like other commenters have mentioned finish your degree first! Having a degree, any degree will open more doors for you.

Maybe you can transition to ML-Ops : it's building stuff around Data Science pipeline, and it's better to understand why it needs to be built.