[sjcrank]

I have found it is much easier to switch to a new stack within your existing employer than it is to get hired for a stack for which you have no professional experience.

Here are the steps:

a. find employment at a company that requires your niche skillset but also has projects in your desired tech stack (hopefully this is your current employer)

b. learn enough of the desired tech stack on your own to be a useful contributor

c. ask to switch over to a project using your new stack, or volunteer to write tests or help in some other way to get your foot in the door (this may require some persistence and relationship-building)

d. once you have some experience you are ready to add it to your resume and seek your dream job

[fecak]

This is advice that many seem to overlook. Leverage the current skills to get exposure to the ones that you want. It is not always easy to find companies that both use your dated skill and the skill you want. Devs at those companies probably aren't that interested in using the old technologies, so you should be welcomed for your willingness to do the job they don't want to do in exchange for learning something new.

[joesmo]

Me too. I started an open source project on my own time that helped me learn but was also useful to the company. Only took a couple of evenings and it didn't have all the functionality we needed but it was useful. I was able to get it adopted and now am working on our for work, though most features are complete since it's a small server project. This is just an example and it probably won't work everywhere but it's an option sometimes.