If you want less stress and better pay, you have two options: join a growth/later stage startup as engineer or take on consulting work enough to pay your bills while you figure out your path.
I've heard consulting is again stressful as you need to occasionally deal with bad clients, payment issues, and regularly need to scout new clients to keep the money flowing.
bad clients and payment issues do happen - but not nearly as often as you think if you work with good companies. It mostly also happens with cheap clients.
You do have to find new clients but once you do good work for 2-3 clients, they'll keep wanting you back.
