Especially if you have Python experience, then yes the opportunity definitely exists.
For example when I hire MLEs (which I am doing now if anyone wants to apply - supportlogic.io) I am willing to look at people who are solid Python/backend engineers and who have been "ML adjacent" or who we believe could learn the ropes of ML enough to contribute. The stronger an engineer, the more flexibility we have in ML knowledge. Some ML engineering is task-specific but a lot of it is automation, data engineering, and improving data scientist code (for which you do need ML experience
I've found it's a lot easier to teach an engineer enough DS/ML fundamentals to do ML Engineering than it is to teach a data scientist engineering skills. A lot easier...
Interesting. Honestly to me Python and backend engineer are effectively orthogonal skillsets though. I would expect any decent programmer to pick up Python in about a week... (slight exaggeration but you get the point).
For example when I hire MLEs (which I am doing now if anyone wants to apply - supportlogic.io) I am willing to look at people who are solid Python/backend engineers and who have been "ML adjacent" or who we believe could learn the ropes of ML enough to contribute. The stronger an engineer, the more flexibility we have in ML knowledge. Some ML engineering is task-specific but a lot of it is automation, data engineering, and improving data scientist code (for which you do need ML experience
I've found it's a lot easier to teach an engineer enough DS/ML fundamentals to do ML Engineering than it is to teach a data scientist engineering skills. A lot easier...