If you’re already a skilled programmer, I actually think cybersecurity is a pretty straightforward field to get in to.

The tradeoff is that you have to not mind:

1) relocating to the greater Washington DC metro area, and

2) getting a US security clearance,

Though this website really makes it seem like cybersecurity is all about the world of web apps and commercial tech companies, I would actually posit that the US DOD / Intelligence community is the largest customer of cybersecurity research in the US. (It’s dispersed through a big web of contracting firms, but the end client of most of these firms is one of a handful of agencies or military intelligence divisions.)

I say this as someone who works in the field: if you can code, and you can get cleared, you can probably find someone in the cybersecurity field who wants to hire you. The field is hungry for experienced talent. The fact that you’ve previously forward developed web apps is not a drawback - if anything, it’s an asset. Knowing how developers think is a great asset that most pentesters and reverse engineering focused people in the field lack.

Your focus in UX, user research, and design is a huge asset. There are tons of dogshit web apps that government agencies use for important national security purposes. Trust me on this.

Edit: expanding on the note about the "big web of contracting firms" - there are a ton of little DARPA / pentest / cyber research companies in the DC metro area that would kill for an experienced programmer with an interest in cybersecurity research. They don't pay nearly as much as FAANG, but there's also substantially less competition for those jobs, and (in NoVA/southern MD, anyway) tons of opportunities to jump ship to different teams with different work and better cultural fit, if you're interested.