MechE here as well (B.S and M.Sc). I don't think it's as bleak as you think it is. I would argue a MechE degree is one of the most versatile engineering degree out there. I have plenty of friends who ended up not even touching anything MechE related out of college. As for me, I'm a couple years older than you. I did apply to a couple positions at FAANGs with the hope to transition my career (I've been in hardware design for most of my career). I ended up getting a couple interviews for a SWE/ML researcher. But funnily enough I ended up taking another hardware role before my interview rounds ended because I learned I wanted to do a hardware+software role (60/40 maybe?). End of the day is to work on projects and upload them to some sort of a git repo (GitHub or gitlab). Also prepare to leetcode/CCTI like it's your job. I had to for about three months before I felt like I was ready for interviews.