I'm a very experienced sysadmin (10 years) on "enterprise" systems trying to transition to another employer. Interviews haven't gone well for a bunch of reasons. That's not a bad thing.

I'm taking this as a signal I should pivot to being a data engineer since 80% of my current job is ETL/automation/analysis on big SQL databases that I manage all the way down to the hardware. I abandoned report development GUIs a long time ago as python/perl is much faster for the same files. I also get all the machine learning I need that way.

I am considering getting another master's degree (MBA has been useless) so I have a piece of paper as proof I can do the job.

Has anyone else made the transition to Data Engineer? What do you feel helped the most make the transition?