Not the person you are replying to. But I did it by focusing on learning soft skills and project management skills - even though I am not a project manager.

I focused on small companies before my current job where the director/CTO was looking for people who could demonstrate a history of being “smart and get things done”.

I avoided the leetCode grind by preparing for a couple of years to target the cloud consulting department of the two of the major cloud providers or if necessary one of their partners. I knew that a combination of software development, infrastructure, cloud, and soft skills would give me a competitive advantage.