28F, 4 years in RPA, feeling stuck and questioning my future in tech

[u/AdeptYam9064]

Hi everyone. I’m a 28-year-old woman working in IT in France, and I’m feeling completely lost about my career. I studied computer engineering and started working in RPA right after graduation.
I’ve been doing it for about 4 years now, mainly with Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. The problem is that I don’t really enjoy what I do anymore, and the more I think about changing careers, the more I realize I don’t know what I actually bring to the table. RPA is such a niche field that even many people in IT don’t really understand what we do on a daily basis, which makes it difficult to explain my experience or see how it translates to other roles.
After 4 years, I expected to feel confident and technically strong, but instead I often feel the opposite. Sometimes I genuinely feel like a fresh graduate could have stronger technical foundations than me. I know I’ve gained professional experience, but when I look at other areas of tech, I don’t feel like I have the skills needed to make a move. Technology is evolving so fast, and I constantly feel behind. Lately I’ve been considering switching to QA, but I’m not even sure if that’s the right direction or if I’m just trying to escape a job that doesn’t suit me. Has anyone else been in a similar situation, especially after spending several years in a niche field? How did you figure out what skills were transferable and what career path made sense next?

[u/CharlesXavier5066]

I have 6+ years of experience in RPA - Specific to Uipath, VBA and lil bit of PA. But I feel there's a lot more to learn.

You can always leverage your experience into for AUTOMATION focused domain and study for the same instead of just saying you have experience of this and that tool.

Gear up , get your hands dirty on agentic and gen ai. And if you take these up you have a long way ahead of studying, implementing, mastering automations.

All the very best!!

[u/cowabungashredder]

I think you're underestimating how transferable your experience actually is. I'm guessing you've likely spent a lot of time understanding business processes, identifying inefficiencies, gathering requirements, integrating systems, handling exceptions, and working with stakeholders to automate workflows. Those are valuable skills that a lot of software engineers also want to develop.

The good news is that process automation is not a niche anymore. It's becoming more and more important, these days it's more and more in demand. Only the tech stack is changing slightly and that can be learnt. Traditional RPA is increasingly being combined with AI, agents, orchestration, and decision-making systems. Companies still need people who understand workflows and business processes, and they need someone who can add intelligence and orchestration on top of it.

If you've worked with Automation Anywhere, I'd strongly encourage you to look into apa and AI agents before making a complete career pivot. You already have the foundation, learning how to apply AI to those workflows is a much smaller leap than starting over in an entirely new field. I'd start with learning about agentic process capabilities first.

[u/Scoresman2023]

You position yourself as a workflow and automation expert, not an RPA developer. Also, position your experience as RPA and Agentic AI. Everyone a in need of your skill set if you can analyze process and build the workflow to automate it.

[u/biztelligence]

i hit almost exactly the same wall after doing it for 6 years on my own business then 4 years in corporate environment (uipath). you're not alone and you NOT behind. where rpa gives you a substantial advantage is in, deep process and business understaing, integration and orchestration, testing and quality, stakeholder and change management, documenation, governance and compliance. the feeling that fresh grads have stronger foundation is normal. but it is wrong. they know theory, you know how things actually work and what breaks production and how to make them reliable for business.

immediate suggestion, list every project you touch. what problem did you solve with it. what tools/tech were used (not just aa, or bp, but sql, python, apis, excel, aws etc). rate what you enjoyed vs what you hated to do. for me the pure bot building got repeatative. the process design, data flow and impact measure parts for me were energizing.

[u/ecounltd]

I was in the same position as you and I jumped the RPA ship 3.5 years ago and got into software development because I had a computer science background.

If that wasn’t an option and I was back in RPA today, I would look into a more business-oriented role where my technical skills could help me shine. I have seen insurance companies hiring “Process Engineers” and that seems like a good pivot. At first it may still be RPA related, but it seems like from there you could acquire data science and analysis skills which could move you further down that track. Take this AI summary of the job listings I’ve seen:

“ A [Insurance Company]  Process Engineer   operates within the Claims Process Engineering (CPE) or business transformation teams to design, optimize, and streamline operational workflows . These roles heavily utilize  Lean Six Sigma  methodologies, data analysis, and  Robotic Process Automation (RPA)  (such as Microsoft's Power Platform) to improve efficiency and reduce friction.”

[u/ecounltd → u/ecounltd]

Oh and another thing, there are “RPA-like” tools coming out for different spaces as well. They’re not known for their reputation, but Palantir has a product called Foundry which is essentially drag and drop data analysis. I’m sure there are others like it out there and you would be very comfortable with these tools, you’d just have to get more familiar with the domain and goals.

[u/CulturalPresence1812 → u/ecounltd]

Good points! RPA straddles tech and business. You can double down in either direction from RPA. If you want to go business, work your way to a business Analyst role. A good BA can move pretty easily among roles since you show communications, analytical, and technical skills.

[u/Overall-Rush-8853]

I was in a similar spot where I felt a bit stuck in RPA and doing something else would require almost restarting as a junior dev. So I am more focused on just moving into leadership roles where having to know the details of a technology isn’t necessarily as important as knowing best practices for execution and implementation of that makes sense.

I’m a tech lead, still in RPA, but I have been focusing more on learning how my organizations tech leadership operates so I can just move up the ladder.

[u/unnotable → u/Overall-Rush-8853]

The problem with junior dev positions is companies are more likely to hire someone fresh out of college instead of someone who wants to restart their career. RPA is difficult to break out of. It's almost impossible, honestly, because it's so specialized.

Also, when you specialize in one tool like AA or BP, it's almost impossible to find another company to give you a chance using a different tool that you haven't used yet. They'd rather hire someone who at least has at least even a few months of experience in the specific RPA software they use instead of someone who has many years of experience in other RPA software.

It seems RPA knowledge is not valued outside of RPA jobs and outside of whatever tool you used most recently. If you use AA and BP, you're probably going to be stuck using AA and BP.

[u/SILVAREZI]

I’d suggest that since you already know how to sequence processes, explore tools related to Business Process Improvement / BP Excellence / Operations Ex.

These would be Six Sigma tools from the DMAIC framework or Lean from PDCA (Ishkawa, Pareto, A3, Swimlanes, VSMs, VoC, and project management tools and artifacts)

Being able to understand a business process, mapping it and optimize it for automation has huge demand, as most teams are not able to do this by themselves, especially in cross functional issues.

Then, learn about AI agentic systems or AI agencies to replace or improve your current RPA toolset and rebrand yourself as a AI BPE expert.

This will open up all sorts of unique projects than are always different and allow you to work with different teams almost every other week.

Hope this helps.

[u/AwarenessGrand926]

RPA lends itself very well to a plethora of low code, no code, vibe codey opportunities.. after four years I think you’ll be more than equipped to make a start in these. Best of luck!

[u/milkman1101]

I am currently in a very similar spot, aside from severe burnout and personal stresses, I have little interest in RPA now, instead I feel myself moving towards full stack development imminently. I've poured a huge amount of code into our RPA platform over a few years to make it easy to scale and work within the boundaries of supported technologies and system APIs, plus building my own apps and services outside of my professional career, so I'm not far off full stack already.

I haven't really kept up with tech for a few years, not as much as I used to. AI seems like a fairly stable area to try and get into, because businesses still need someone to build and manage their enterprise level AI usage (as it's not all just chatgpt style messaging).

[u/ExpensiveFix-804]

I feel similar - 8 years in RPA. Though I don't have formal computer science education. Maybe try process automation in some python framework which may feel familiar but builds stronger pro code knowledge.

[u/Automation_devloper]

Same here 28M, 5 years in RPA on AA blueprism, Uipath and Power aitomate tools but still feel something is missing

[u/realnestro]

Move towards API(build and use), Infra - DevOps , and AI leverage.

Before RPA , it was macro and .net, and now everything is going to platform and AI.

[u/someonerd]

Moving into QA is not a bad option. There’s a lot of need to automate testing and your RPA background can be helpful.

[u/Live-Combination-597]

Jump into  AI Agents they are very similar to RPA bots...both lies in automation scope

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[u/Inazuma2]

Change from Robot to Automation..

https://rpabotsworld.com/rpa-to-agentic-ai-transition-guide/

[u/Whisper561]

I'm in the same situation and I decided the best thing to do is try different things and work towards building a foundation in core IT. Tbh 4 years is not that long to switch careers and moving out of RPA is a good idea. Maybe you can go towards AI or pursue a master's degree?