Yeah, the problem is I want to change areas. Despite an apparent desperate shortage of engineers I'm having trouble getting a job that isn't near-identical to the one I have now. I'd like to do data science or web front ends or something for a change but I'm finding it very difficult to be taken seriously. Its frustrating when I see clueless people getting entry level roles which I could do much easier.

what's your current background?

20 years of corporate java.

For data science, you could get a 1 year masters in statistics and leverage the Java experience for Spark and the associated ML libraries

Thanks - yes I could, however I was hoping to skip that and go straight to a junior role. I see grads hired for such things all the same, I guess its impossible once you're not young any more.

I think there's more to it than that. So many people want to break into data science that the market is flooded at the junior levels. With the masters in stats you cover that half of the role, and the Java covers the programming side of it. I'll bet you could make a lateral move into an ml engineer role