[yodi]

Great question!

1) Depend on your own goal. Its wise if you believe in the future, market appreciate ML eng higher than software eng (within same years exp)

2) Yes. I did (> 3 years now)

3) Start find the ML job

Is there an ML engineering practice that isn't focused on building models but more on managing/deploying/scaling models?

Yes. Companies who adopt ML at large scale usually need this.

i.e. can I avoid learning all the maths underneath?

Yes its possible as long as you are focusing on infrastructure. Eg: create/monitoring pipelines, models, etc.

Noted: While you finding job, try to take professional ML engineering certification/program (Google, AWS, Azure, etc) - they will provide you hands-on lab experience with some case studies. The cost is super cheap