I recently completed an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and unfortunately didn't realize my interest in attending grad school until my senior year. This means that I neglected to take advantage of many of the research opportunities presented to me like REUs. I graduated with a relatively good GPA, but no research to speak of.
For the last 6 months I have been working in industry as a Site Reliability Engineer, but I feel that before I apply for a masters in CS program I should have some research experience under my belt.
I have looked around to find some research opportunities but it appears that they are usually scoped to undergraduates (REUs) or graduates, not much in the way of postbacc roles.
I recently found out about "Research Software Engineer Staff" positions at places like UMich or jobs at the national labs where I would be helping to implement research projects, even if not researching myself. My question is, would this be worth pursuing to get closer to academia? If I can't find any true research opportunities, I was thinking I'd attempt this, since I could imagine that this sort of experience might be appealing to programs.
Any thoughts on this approach or any other ideas about research opportunities post-undergraduate would be appreciated.