Isn't this basically a software job? Like, get a junior role and work your way up over 5 years doing 40 hrs a week.
You can learn more about programming by giving yourself new and challenging projects at home. Doing both personal and professional work is the fastest way to progress while learning lessons from both. (commercial work teaches you the "professional" side of software engineering, which has almost nothing to do with programming)
Congrats you've found an edge case.
I've spent my whole life working in "commercial" settings, I've learned everything doing that, and it's all programming. I really don't know which places you work at where a software engineer doesn't do programming. That's the whole job, 8hrs a day.
Fuck going home and slugging another 4hrs software, unless you have the energy in which case good for you, you can fast track.