Moving from ops to engineering

Hi All,

After 3 years in operations (which was quite successful as I was promoted in-team) I changed to an engineer position which turned out to be a really boring project and the only thing I could benefit from that I met with firewalls (PA) and security. Other than this, my main activites now are user support and administration..

I've applied for a few engineering position. 2 was really promising. The first I failed by not much, but that position was really demanding, including the regular routing switching but also, wifi, voip, and security. And this is a role I am really looking for. They declined me because they needed an engineer who knew all of these things right off the bat, because the previous engineer almost finished his notice period. (I'm really curious if they found someone in this very small time range..)

The second one was a bit way over my head but they decided to invite me to a first round interview which was 80% technical. Technical as in the interviewer did not went in to too much detail it was more of a high level discussion. What did I work with, how I used tools, troublehsooting methods and so on.

And this is where I felt that I'm missing key skills that makes an engineer engineer. E.g. designing, implementing even some project management aspects.

The problem is that I'm in a senior role now with senior pay, so yes I could go back to a junior role but that would cost me at least 30-40% pay reduction which I would avoid.

Question is: how can I acquire meaningful skills in this matter without a real engimeering job.

Thanks in advance!