I totally get the "too senior" thing, but it's not as bad as I feared. Here's my own experience of making the kind of move you're talking about.
Last year I switched from ops manager/factotum in a small agency to a pure dev role in a corp. I get to think about technical stuff most of the time now and it feels okay, despite my fears about the 9-5. Thing is, it took me two years to get to that point. I knew I wanted to move for similar reasons to those you list. And Imagined that I had to head for a job that would value my agency experience which was varied and had a management and client-facing bias. So I felt like I was trapped doing the same sort of stuff. I was good at it, but it wasn't making me happy any more.
I have a technical background (programming language theory) but it felt so long ago as to be irrelevant. And perhaps it was. I managed to get second interviews for engineering roles -- which is what I wanted and I turned a couple down because they weren't quite right.
Then this happened. Back 2 years ago, when I started to look for a change, I also got excited about some new-ish tech (Elm, in this case). I started running a local meetup and going to relevant conferences just to scratch my itch. I got a three month contract using it and took unpaid leave from the agency to give myself the chance to do it. But as soon as I added it to my CV I got a call from a recruiter from a local company who wanted exactly that tech. Now I work there and they sponsor the meetup that I still run.
I admit I hit it lucky in this case with a genuine excitement for an emerging tech, and a local employer who were early adopters. But I think the important thing is that I was doing this alongside job hunting and hadn't even connected the two. I was finding a way to do what excited me, and being committed and passionate about that. Then when the chance came up, making the move was easy and pleasant.
Last year I switched from ops manager/factotum in a small agency to a pure dev role in a corp. I get to think about technical stuff most of the time now and it feels okay, despite my fears about the 9-5. Thing is, it took me two years to get to that point. I knew I wanted to move for similar reasons to those you list. And Imagined that I had to head for a job that would value my agency experience which was varied and had a management and client-facing bias. So I felt like I was trapped doing the same sort of stuff. I was good at it, but it wasn't making me happy any more.
I have a technical background (programming language theory) but it felt so long ago as to be irrelevant. And perhaps it was. I managed to get second interviews for engineering roles -- which is what I wanted and I turned a couple down because they weren't quite right.
Then this happened. Back 2 years ago, when I started to look for a change, I also got excited about some new-ish tech (Elm, in this case). I started running a local meetup and going to relevant conferences just to scratch my itch. I got a three month contract using it and took unpaid leave from the agency to give myself the chance to do it. But as soon as I added it to my CV I got a call from a recruiter from a local company who wanted exactly that tech. Now I work there and they sponsor the meetup that I still run.
I admit I hit it lucky in this case with a genuine excitement for an emerging tech, and a local employer who were early adopters. But I think the important thing is that I was doing this alongside job hunting and hadn't even connected the two. I was finding a way to do what excited me, and being committed and passionate about that. Then when the chance came up, making the move was easy and pleasant.