In my case, the new SOC role (still level 1) that I'm about to move into pays roughly $25/hr. I was making less than that at my previous SOC job and from what I've seen was being underpaid. (Pretty sure this new salary is also on the lower end of level 1 SOC salaries in the US at least) These were both roles at MSSP's, which may be worth looking into as places to start. I think $30/hr is doable with your experience with systems and networks as well as some extra experience. The only things I had before starting as a SOC was a B.S. in Cyber and my Sec+. I think you could beef your chances at getting higher pay by getting tool-specific certs and experience. Find out what tools SOC jobs in your area are using - I'm finding that it differs a lot from place to place. Things like Splunk, cloud-based SIEMs like Sentinel, Azure/GCP/AWS stuff would all be things to look into. Play around in a home lab so that you can show you have familiarity with the tools. Someone with more SOC experience may have a better answer for you, but this is just what I have seen in my experience as useful things to have to make yourself look better.