Granted it’s been 30-something years since I graduated with my CS degree, but my experience might be helpful. My first job out of college ended up being in tech support for a software company, and I used that to eventually move into software development. During my 2 years in tech support I learned what I could about the source code for the companies product, and built relationships with members of the engineering team. It got to the point where I could carry on conversations with some of the software developers to identify potential causes of bugs that customers were running into.
Because of the relationships I made with the software engineers they eventually recognized my skills and one of the managers eventually helped me transition from tech support into a software developer position.
Just like they did with Jimmy Carter & the hostages… What’s that saying about forgetting history?