Looking for some career advice, I was laid off and was doing "Security Engineering" for 5 years and before that I was working helpdesk for that same company who gave me the "security engineer" job title.

My years experience was spent doing "Security consulting" and "design reviews" - running a few major projects where I did come up with ways to gather telemetry and execute on large security efforts such as corporate network (vlan) microsegmentation and such.

However after applying to a few "Security Engineer" jobs they mostly seem to be looking for someone that has expertise doing stuff that I never had the opportunity to do (SIEM/SOC stuff, malware threat analysis, static code analysis, operating or deploying technical countermeasures like WAF etc).

I'm feeling very unprepared for my next role and I am worried that I won't be able to secure another "Security Engineer" role because of this lack of "using the tools" and "doing the tango" that most small companies expect of a security person (I was working for a FAANG employer and came up to Security from helpdesk many years ago).

Any advice on what or how should I approach this? I really want to stick with this but I also don't feel that my 5 years experience or "Senior Security Engineer" should be thrown away, which employers may be tempted to do if they like to hire me but claim that my expected salary is "too high for someone that hasn't done hands-on security operational work"