Well, I also applied like what 4 times, only got accept 1 time and so far never got a response back about my old apps.
Right now, I‘m part of the contributor team, which gives me at least a small inside of what is coming.
Maybe try to become one of that, at least brings you closer to the dev team and you might be able to get a position.
Trust me, I‘m not a fan of how the current system works and I doubt that anything will ever change here if you don’t get 3/4 of the dev team to agree with you
But I guess that‘s how disco works, since this is how it always worked when I joined. I guess we can just hope that someday one of the dev Leads starts to hear us.