Great to see you being an ace though! I hope you keep moving forward.
If you want to get involved in research projects (which I do think helps you land more creative jobs) I would suggest working your hard-core software dev background when you pitch potential collaborators. You would be very surprised to see the quality of code coming out of some researchers because there is little incentive to be a good software engineer in academia. The normal way to participate in research is to be in a PhD program but there are many other ways so long as you can work closely with people who come from a more traditional research trajectory.
Are companies in geospatial or government aerospace groups hiring people with your skills? Might be a first step?
At my school, I was required to take algos and data structures in addition to the program requirements. This was to make up for the fact that I wasn't already a CS grad. Way less time effort and money than a full CS degree! So maybe you can find a similar arrangement?
From my experience, if you're going to pay for more school, you should try to get a masters. A prof once gave me the same advice "it's more work (i.e., a BSc is typically 3-4 years) and in the end you will just have another bachelors". The nice thing about MSc programs is they tend to be more project-based and focus on higher-level concepts so you learn more useful / high-level stuff than in undergrad IMHO.
Good luck! There's always an alternate path :)
I fumbled for a few years before worming my way into a middle-ranked graduate department of Neuroscience. Learned how to work an MRI and how to hack scripts in Matlab. Realized I could think in maths/stats even though none of my transcripts suggested I could (my only undergrad math course was calculus, I took it twice, and the second time I got a 67). I went to a conference in 2012 and saw a Harvard Business Review article on big data in the airport on my way home. I thought to myself "no one is going to care about my MRI research but I bet I can become a data scientist without a PhD".
So I found a lab-tech job post-MSc for a bit and then I became a "research methods specialist" and worked in a research hospital for 4 years. I learned a lot about high-performance computing, the kinds of models used for pre-clinical trials, and methods development for clinical research. I ended up on a lot of papers. My CV now rivals many PhD grads I know.
Then through some networking and persistence, I find myself at the tail end of a professional MSc in computer science at a top-ranked machine learning institute. I have successfully survived both core CS coursework and graduate courses in reinforcement learning and deep learning. I'm currently working on multiple deep learning research projects and getting to know some really interesting people doing biomedical startups.
10 years ago I was living in my dad's basement, a psych grad who couldn't math and showed pretty much zero aptitude for these kinds of endeavors. I never would have believed that I would be in the kind of program I am in now. I'm only 32, and my story isn't done, but I'm sure if I make it onto any list, it will be one for people over the age of 35.