Great advice and wholly agreed that a recruiter is the way to go. I'm more familiar with the US than UK employment market, but if things work similarly, this is the obvious path.

1) Good recruiters will bypass some of the HR confusion (misunderstanding team requirements, etc)

2) You have a valuable set of skills and are looking for a specific type of job. Recruiters are better about this than blind applying

Furthermore, the "What industry?" question will be an excellent opportunity to avoid processes where your conviction is likely to impact. People have legitimate reasons for wanting to avoid heavily-regulated industries (boring, slow), so it's not an odd question.

I would say if you go through recruiters, be aware (in the US at least) there are good recruiters (who have a line on positions and work hard) and bad recruiters (who are trying to bootstrap a rep by "representing" as many people exclusively as they can). Be extremely suspicious before signing any exclusivity contracts with one.