Moving from one engineering discipline into another
Has anyone tried or succeeded at moving from one engineering discipline to another? There's a bit of a schism between electrical and mechanical engineers, obviously, so I was wondering if this is at all possible in my particular situation:
I'm currently studying mechanical engineering because my father works in the industry and has a lot of contacts (and I enjoy it). However, halfway through my coursework somewhat by chance I stumbled upon an opportunity to work on a project doing acoustic signal processing at a major international company (I have a background in that field). I'm not doing any engineering, however I work with the engineers and I more or less tell the engineers what needs to be adjusted in the models and they handle the engineering side of it (if it helps, this is software for text-to-speech).
The problem is that it seems like computer science or electronic engineering is a more common discipline for this kind of work, meanwhile I'm studying mechanical engineering and am too far into my coursework for it to make any sense to change disciplines. I understand the basics of the signal processing and am certain I can learn the engineering side of it through self-study and work experience. However, it seems like it would be difficult to convince employers that I have the requisite knowledge and skills given that they mostly want electronic and software engineers for these roles.
I would love to be able to segue my work experience into this field and get a big head start by graduating with an engineering degree as well as already having two years of work experience. But it seems like the two fields -- mechanical engineering and signal processing -- are somewhat contradictory. Has anyone successfully made such a large interdisciplinary jump? Or, similarly, does anyone have recommendations for how I might be able to leverage my work experience into my degree field or my degree into the field of my work experience?
Short version: I currently work in an industry outside of my degree field. I need advice on how to merge a mechanical engineering degree into the software engineering field or vice versa.