Funny you should mention kernel development. You'd really want to do it for people going the other way, since most of the folks who wrangle the kernel there are not familiar with the Secret Sauce systems. You know, like the one called "MapReduce", cough cough.

I speak from experience: my SA-SRE limbo involved leaving SRE and landing in a role expected to bridge the kernel team to prod, by making their tests work on the things which involve Lots Of Machines (tm). That was a SWE job through and through but it did not give me the ability to transfer out of it until I went through the process last year.

Grats. Nice to hear good news now and again.

During the interview process, it is not clear which bucket you're being dropped in. Or indeed even that there are two buckets. This may have an impact on whether someone would accept an offer or not.