Also seems like if I get 1-2 years of experience in this department with corporate validations and pick up on stuff quickly, I can leverage that experience to apply for an auditor role in the CRA. Those roles pay like $90k entry level, which is another 50% jump since my current job pays about $60k. It might also be pretty interesting work. The nice thing about the CRA is that they take a lot of alternatives when it comes to college education and accreditation, and they seem to value internal experience and performance quite highly since they’ll have access to all my performance evaluations and can speak to my manager(s) about how I did at each stage of my learning.
They also have a bunch of online courses I can take during work hours to improve my skills which seems like a great resource. I just have to fill out a learning plan detailing which courses I want to take and what skills I want to learn and then discuss it with my manager. Once they approve it, I can learn a bunch from their resources while getting paid for my time spent doing so.