You won't get there if you stay solo, so get hired, join a team and learn as much as you can from your peers. Large-scale is team-scale.
To add to this, for the "large scale technologies" you're interested in, remember that there aren't many individuals that knows it all (and neither will you!).
Senior engineers and CTOs will have a rudimentary knowledge of a lot of the moving pieces, but it's primarily a team effort. Even if you "knew it all", you wouldn't have enough hours in the day to keep it all up to date and running. Running any larger piece of software is a team effort.
But as a member of a team you'll still get a much better idea of all the pieces, even though you won't be able to master them all.
I went a 3-month programming bootcamp, got hired as a junior software engineer at a non-profit with a small engineering team (~10 people), and learned a _ton_ about the sorts of things you’re talking about (automated testing and deployment, container technology, JS pipelines, etc.). I also became a much better programmer through years of code reviews and pair programming. If you can find a place that’s big enough to have several people far more experienced than yourself and at least one of them is willing to help you out when you need it, you’ll probably get where you’re trying to go!
What I suggest for front-end is a component based approach: React, Vue, Svelte, Lit. Components are a new paradigm, there are here to stay. I also suggest to learn “The new responsive” from web.dev - in the same way the future.
Look at marketing agencies especially, where they typically do more than dev, but need some dev skills in house. Focus on Wordpress for smaller projects and use Laravel as a framework for larger stuff. You'd be surprised how many businesses just want a Wordpress site as part of a larger marketing initiative, so be proficient there and you can make money. And the Laravel ecosystem has everything you need for large scale web projects, with Laracasts being a great resource to learn.
You will also need to interview there. Your username indicates that you suck at interviewing. I hate to break it to you, but interviewing is a skill that can be learned. With. Practice. You can either interview at places or try a site like interviewing.io You can get better at interviewing, trust me.
Once you get hired to the not-so-software company, use that experience as a stepping stone to get hired somewhere better. Repeat until you find a place you like
in terms of interviewing, no opportunities so no experience. in the past ive had to apply to roughly 80 jobs to get one interview. recruiters on linkedin are a little better at ~30 conversations per interview but its plain exhausting, takes a ton of time, they demand replies instantly or ghost, but really its overwhelmingly likely they'll ghost me anyways.
its been a while since the last round of attempts so ill give your suggestions a shot in a few weeks. thanks
You can also find an existing project and contribute to it. What's your GitHub username? I can follow you
Your resume should be exactly 1 page long, and have something that stands out (company worked for, open source contributions, volunteer work.. anything that makes it be different).
If you have worked for decades, write "over 10 years experience" :)
Bullet points are good, long sentences are bad.
Listing tech/languages is a good idea if you can list a lot of real stuff. No one cares if you used ms word.
It should be 1 page!!! Don't cheat via small fonts. People can look at your linkedin if they need to know all that crap.
list a couple clients if you can
point out that you’ve been working for that (your) software company for several years as a senior software engineer
pass bullshit brainteaser problems
viola
been learning and growing for 3 decades starting on a IIe but highlighting that part hasn’t worked so why not experiment with my approach?
Expanding on the above… I work at such a place and our bar for recruitment is a lot lower than that of more snooty companies principally focused on software. If you can demonstrate potential then it will be relatively easy to get in. From there, you will start working on projects larger than what you are used to, that _won't be_ "the next $FAMOUS_THING" while still offering plenty of learning opportunities.