Another comment here mentioned the on the job steps you can take, and that mirrors my experience. I also enrolled in Georgia Tech's OMSCS after a year or so of self study. About 1 year in I took a role using Python for network topology analysis software. I went from there to using go and C to develop a distributed database product. It's been incremental steps lower on the stack and towards more "pure" dev work. I'm now where I wanted to be and will keep doing this kind of work for as long as I can get away with it.