In my career i have gone from Systems Engineer to professional services to Profesional services team lead to Senior Systems administrator to now just Systems administrator. All doing basically the same IT stuff at progressively higher levels other than the team lead part.
When i was looking for my last job i applied for a remote admin job and experienced exactly what you described. I was on the third interview and was asked when i was going to move to the area and if i wanted a relocation allowance as part of the offer. Uhh what? To them a remote admin was an administrator that went to remote sites. What a waste of my time
If there is any software you want running at kernel though it is your AV. Not saying Spotify has a reason for running at kernel though… But running AV at kernel in theory is a better way to protect the machine and you.