Most of the advice you receive will be to do a PhD as that&#x27;s what most researches have and what they do.<p>That may be hard without a bachelors degree, prior research knowledge, and potential academic recommendations.<p>One way to short-circuit this is to take your software engineering skills to a research lab and work as a research assistant.<p>This allows you:
a) contact with academics who are doing research
b) the visibility of what research actually is
c) to add value from day one<p>Most labs are in heavy need of software engineers to help with software related tasks.<p>So first focus on what type of research you are interested in (look at as many research labs in as many different disciplines as possible) and then contact them to see how you can help.