Can't get DE interviews. Is my (lack of) work experience holding me back?

Hi all. I've been working almost ten years combined at a cancer research center and nonprofit, contributing to genomic and public health research by engineering pipelines to ingest, process, and warehouse data along with analysis pipelines. I can manipulate large amounts of data (R/dplyr), design/create/query complex SQL databases, automate reporting tasks (cron, Rmarkdown), create Shiny dashboards for exploratory analysis, and create novel visualizations (ggplot/Tableau). I can configure pretty much anything on AWS EC2/RDS/S3 and have some experience with EMR/Spark/Hadoop. Despite my background (MS in quantitative science) and work experience, I've received 2 screening calls out of 40+ applications for data engineer positions. I started out looking for senior DE positions, but lately I've been applying to any job listing with my skillset. Both of the screening calls were for positions more in line with data scientists and statistical modeling, which I have very little experience in. Both companies didn't quite understand what they wanted/needed. I thought the DE/DS job market was hot, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Is my lack of experience outside of the non-profit sector holding me back? I've applied to mostly top- and mid-tier companies. Should I look into joining a smaller company to get more experience working with business/customer/product data? I appreciate any guidance. #data #dataengineer #dataengineerinterview #dataanalytics #datascience #recruiting