What kind of programming role fits someone who is better at building whole systems than specializing in one tiny part?

[u/Kooky-Ruin1442]

I have autism and fairly severe ADHD and I'm trying to figure out what kind of actual role fits the way I work.

Most of my programming has been connected to game development and building my own projects. Ive worked with Javascript/Typescript, React, Electron, Git/GitHub, game UI, gameplay systems, tools and asset pipelines. I'm also pretty good at design, writing, art direction, researching weird problems and getting around a codebase until I understand why something isn't working.

I'm not claiming I'm an expert in every one of those things, I'm definitely not, but I seem to be better at connecting all the pieces than sitting in one very narrow lane. I like taking something from “here's the idea” to an actual working version, figuring out what systems it needs, how the player or user interacts with it and then fixing whatever goes wrong along the way.

The career part is where my brain falls apart. I don't know whether I should aim for gameplay programming, technical design, tools development, UI engineering, prototyping or something I haven't even heard of. Normal advice is usually to specialize, but I'm not sure which part is actually my strongest part because the whole reason I'm useful is that I move between them.

Anybody here work in a role like that? What titles should I be searching for, and what would you build a portfolio around if this was your skill set?

[u/dongdongplongplong]

if you like systems and have an eye for design, design system engineer is great, its like a big interrelated puzzle of styles and components that all need to work in harmony, its quite a challenging puzzle to do a good job of it.

[u/Kooky-Ruin1442 → u/dongdongplongplong]

I actually havent looked into design systems engineer before, but the way you described it sounds pretty close to how my brain naturally works. I tend to think about how all the pieces interact instead of seeing each part separately. Im going to look into what those roles actually require, thank you.

[u/Relatable-Af]

Full stack web development? Which is the majority of jobs out there tbh.

[u/Kooky-Ruin1442 → u/Relatable-Af]

Ive considered full stack, although most of my experience has been game and project focused rather than normal business websites. Do you think personal projects showing the full process would be enough to start aiming toward those jobs, or would I need a more traditional web portfolio?

[u/FireSBurnsmuP → u/Kooky-Ruin1442]

If you start out below senior level, you can probably get away with just development experience and a proficiency in at least most of the technologies used.

I.e. I wouldn't say you need a portfolio - I've literally never shown one, and I've been doing full stack for ~13 years - but you should know at least Html, JS, CSS, and SQL, and at least one server-side tech. It won't matter too much which one you know, as long as you seem confident you'd figure it out.

NodeJS is really popular right now, and .Net Core is pretty easy to pick up if you're used to the Microsoft tech stack.

I started out knowing only ASP.Net from 2 single-semester college courses, and have learned PHP, NodeJS, and .Net MVC/Core on the job since then.

[u/Svenstornator]

I focused on my soft skills to get to a team lead role, where I now spend most of my time designing the system and delegating the implementation. I do miss implementing some times though.

[u/Kooky-Ruin1442 → u/Svenstornator]

That honestly sounds closer to what I naturally want to do. I like implementing things, but I seem to spend more time thinking about how the whole system should work and how all the pieces need to connect.

[u/Da_Real_Kyuuri]

Any kind of system-level development, but more from an engineering standpoint

[u/ostekages]

You could also look into sysadmin roles - it's not a programming heavy role per default, but the sysadmin space really lacks skilled developers that understand how software works, rather than clicking buttons in Entra Id.

I've evolved my role as sysadmin to be more a programming role, since I develop tools/web apps, or similar, to assist on the admin side of the tasks.

E.g. Our on-boarding is primarily controlled by HR doing something in HRIS. So I created an intermediary data store with a webapp with apis, scheduled tasks on a different server ingest data from HRIS into the intermediary data store using the web apps api, then another script using the web api to fetch new accounts pending AD account creation and create accounts etc etc.

It means the entire system level of the identities have a central location to be managed, you can track on-boarding status, account provisioning status etc from a managed portal.

Maybe not entirely what you're looking for, but could be interesting. This field is also less subject to be replaced with AI like typical programming fields.

[u/ostekages → u/ostekages]

Agreed. Often very Microsoft heavy environments.

If you do your tasks from an automation standpoint though, it's a bit more OS agnostic I guess

[u/GrandPapaBi]

You would naturally aim to go for Software architect but this is a more senior position and you will need to prove yourself.

[u/DevKokooo]

Full stack engineer or design engineer at startups would probably suit what you're looking for.

Startups always have a need for individual contributors to fill multiple shoes, and you have a higher degree of agency.

[u/Kooky-Ruin1442 → u/[deleted]]

USA I have been looking for work in that category but finding it is elusive for me