Reconcile title and pay within 6 months by either negotiating into a market-rate mid-level seat (US tech mid-level floor is $80k+) or moving employer — staying in a role that pays $20k against a 'mid' title actively destroys POT every year it continues.

Pick one concrete tech-adjacent specialty (helpdesk → SysAdmin, support → solutions engineer, ops → revenue operations) and earn 1 named certification in 12 months — converts an under-priced generalist into a labeled specialist whose wage is anchored to a defensible band.

Ship 2 public portfolio artifacts (a GitHub repo solving a real workflow problem, a written case study with metrics) — at this experience level, 'outputs: none' is the single signal recruiters use to filter you out before reading the rest of the profile.