Comment by MilnerRoute

Good luck with HR! (And good for you, for pursuing what you want.)

I'm the wrong guy to ask about which certifications. (Honestly, I was thinking of college-level classes online; theoretically one of them could be just what a future employer is looking for.) Possibly someone else here will have suggestions... I saw another comment here suggest experimenting with hot new technologies. That can also work if you end up with something on your resume that's exactly what they're looking for. And the other standard bit of advice people give is: help on some open source projects? (If you're not comfortable coding on pull requests, you could help with documentation. And it also helps you "network" your way closer to people who may know of jobs...)

Maybe the real lesson from all that is: work backwards? As in, try to figure out what specific things they're looking for in junior engineering roles -- and then try to take a class/start a project/do some independent study on that particular thing.

But the most important thing is: don't give up. With that well-populated GitHub repository -- and your real experience in production building an app -- you're really close. Just keep trying. You're, like, one step away from first junior engineering job. If you want it long enough, it will happen. And from there on, it will get much easier to find your next engineering roles...