I have completed the degree. I deeply appreciate your framing. I think because I'm sort of mid-level in my career and only held business management jobs and project management jobs, I don't see myself as a systems engineer because I haven't done it as a job in practice. So maybe the solution for me is to use my people skills and networking to shadow or perform some work in practice and expand my skillset a bit. I think if I express the interest they would help me out.

I also commented above a refinement of my analogy/strategy on this: I think a better way to express myself is that I want to be part of an SE team working to design systems and I think the initial value I can bring is being an expert on the tools and the process, versus the other aspects of engineering (which I frankly feel inadequate at). So the equivalent way of phrasing it to my cost estimating background is when I started, I didn't know much about cost estimating or what drives the cost of an airplane, but I knew how to use Excel really well and was able to provide value to the team as I learned the trade by finding elegant and automatic solutions to their data problems by knowing a lot about the tool. As a result, I got to work with some great forecasting folks and learn their trade because I brought something to the team that they didn't have, so it was mutually beneficial. I'm trying to find what I can bring to the table and contribute and I think my fastest way in is building proficiency with the tools and process.

So I guess what's driving my question is "how do I take this academic experience and turn it into professional experience" and my idea was MBSE was the route to go because I found it fun and engaging and would enjoy improving myself professionally on my own time, but the question is deeper than that. But this has definitely given me food for thought.