As a developer I feel my career advancement stagnating in its current trajectory.

This feels silly to ask, but is there merit to obtaining a masters degree as a software/design engineer to get to staff level one day?

My gut says experience and street cred matter way more but I'm curious what others think of the ROI.

father, husband, css golfer, ux engineer, silently defining variables as /sdv sdv.wtf

by staff level do you mean like a permanent dev job in a single company, wdym

I'm not if it applies to smaller startups, but it seems like if you can prove you have experience with the role you want while you were in your current role, then if you seek out small teams then they don't really care about your degree, just that you can prove you have experience doing it before. The more managers there are in the company you're looking at, the more you'll have to prove you're "worth it". Also if you seek out small teams, you're probably the only person looking for that role and you have no competition fighting over said role. I'd look on https://cryptocurrencyjobs.co/, I found my job on there not even lying

I guess just being able to market myself as a staff engineer, whether as a full time job or freelancer / consultant.

"staff engineer" typically means one step above senior, or what big tech companies call E4/E5 level