Either way, the worry tends to be the same: does changing mean going back to zero? Do you have to take a junior title and a junior salary, and pretend everything you’ve learned so far didn’t happen? 

We’ve got good news: most of the time, the answer is no. 

Starting over would mean applying for junior roles and writing off the years you’ve already done. A change rarely asks for that, but instead for you to learn the few things the new role needs that your current one didn’t teach you. The rest of your experience still counts, and you’d usually be applying at or near the level you’re on now. 

Which of your skills carry over into tech?

More skills than you’d expect carry over into tech. 

If you’re coming from outside tech, you bring something that can be underrated: you already understand the business. A nurse moving into health tech, an accountant into fintech, a teacher into ed tech. You know the user, the workflow and the vocabulary, and that’s worth a lot more than it feels like when you’re staring at a job ad full of frameworks. 

If you’re still working out which roles would even suit you, the EU’s ESCO classification describes what around 3,000 occupations involve. It’s clunky to search and light on tech detail but it can be a start in your journey to a new job path. 

If you’re already in tech, it’s even easier. Backend to DevOps, data to machine learning, QA to development: in each case you already understand the systems, you’ve read more production code than any newcomer, and you know how work gets shipped. What’s new is the part of the job that’s specific to that role.

None of these is quick. You’ll spend weeks or months learning, probably in evenings and weekends, and there will be a stretch where you feel slow at something you used to be good at. That’s normal, and it passes. You’re adding a layer on top of what you already know, which is a much better place to start from than zero. 

How to find out what you still need to learn

Job ads are the best tool here, and they’re free. No classification or careers guide is going to tell you that this particular team wants Terraform rather than Pulumi. 

So, save five live ads for the role as it’s advertised today, and look for what appears in all five. That’s the start of your list.  

How to explain a career change in an interview

You’re going to be asked why you’re changing careers, and, as long as you can justify your choices clearly, you shouldn’t be afraid of this question.   

• Say what pulled you towards the new area. “I liked the infrastructure side of my backend role more than the features” is a good answer. “I spent three years watching clinicians fight with software and wanted to fix it” is a great one. “My team is a mess” may well be true, but it doesn’t help you very much.
   

• Say what you’re missing, and what you’re doing about it. Something like “moving into DevOps, currently running my own Terraform and Kubernetes setup”. Raising it yourself means you get to answer the question on your own terms.
   

• Have one example you know well. A project, a migration you led, training you finished. Expect them to dig into whichever one you pick.
   
• Translate your experience into their language. If the ad says observability and you were the person paged at 3am, use their word. Recruiters scan for the terms in the ad, and describing the same work in your old team’s vocabulary may make it look like you haven’t done it. 

Does taking time out to study hurt your chances?

Researchers ran an experiment with recruiters to see how employers judge different reasons for being out of work. Candidates who took a training break ranked highest of every group, ahead of former carers, people recovering from illness and the unemployed. They scored best on motivation, discipline, reliability and trainability. 

While longer breaks generally reduce hiring chances, that didn’t apply to training breaks. 

One tip, backed by a field experiment with 9,022 real job applications in the UK: listing each role by the number of years you worked there, instead of by start and end dates, increased callbacks from real employers by around 15% for candidates who had time out of work.  

Most of what you’re good at stays with you. The rest is a few months of learning, and a prepared reason for when they ask why you chose this path. 

Everyone already doing the job you want learned it the same way you’re about to.