1. Data science is often deeper stats knowledge, less programming (ie can sketch something up together using python and libraries, then a programmer can take over to make it production). But you have to understand stats and ideas. I'd expect you to do this or pick it up. Most CS people aren't very deep in stats, so you can do better than them in that area.

2. Regular programming jobs - I think this would be a bit harder to start in. Companies will not know how to evaluate all that various different experience. So you'll have to find something that matches up with a companies needs. a. Maybe some scientific or statistical scientific programming, other than data science? b. Maybe you can find some open source project to contribute to to show you capabilities.

You could take a very short term gig to build up your resume and confidence of what programming is like today.

Interviews - interviews at many companies are unfortunately more about passing a potentially tricky design problem. Try to do one or two problems every day or two at one of the "leet" code type sites. When I interviewed recently at several big-software-cos I was surprised to get multiple leet code problems - and I'm a software engineer with 20 years experience, working on infrastructure.

You should search for data science interview questions to get ready for that. There's huge demand for different kinds of software expertise, but you will have to work and network to get through until you can talk to engineers and interview.

I could boil all this down to:

1. data science looks very promising for you 2. look on linked-in for companies hiring 3. search for data science interview questions on the web 4. interview and get that job!