Ask HN: How can a Sales Engineer (formerly a Dev) get back into Development?

[Murgen_90]

I've had a 4 year career in back-end software development before becoming a Sales Engineer for the past 3 years. I feel that I'm basically at a point where if I continue Sales Engineering any more, my odds of getting back into a professional Dev job will be 0.

My skills are for sure rusty, but I'm still fairly sharp in programming, and I actually have done a lot of test automation which involved quite a bit of code (my company sells services and software for test automation).

I'm looking to change because Sales Engineering is high-pressure and I'm a serious introvert, so delivering presentations all the time has been causing a lot of stress. Development also gives me a deeper satisfaction than selling does.

I left Development as a mid-level Software Engineer. Should I apply to jobs that are mid-level still?