Choice 1 - without a contract a handshake means nothing, and as you've said they'll let you apply for the jobs, but that still doesn't guarantee you'll be given them (especially if you become very useful in L2/L3 support).

For me personally I found getting any software development job I could, even though they're really dull large enterprise forms-over-data jobs, gave me a massive boost in development ability and experience, especially because I was thinking about dev for 8+ hours straight every day.

Will the Choice 1 job make you work less hours? If so that frees up more time to work on dev projects on the side, and you could use that to your advantage.