I would say absolutely. I started my career as a self-taught developer as a contractor at Facebook. That contracting role lasted 2 years, at which point they invited me to go through the Software Engineer interview process, which led to a full-time role. Leading up to that contractor role, I worked on a lot of personal projects to try to build up some measure of practical experience that I could reference on my resume, since I was trying to get my first professional software engineering job, so I didn't have any professional experience to speak of yet. If you haven't already, work on all of the personal and open-source projects you can in order to build up a project portfolio you can refer potential recruiters to. Working as a contractor is a great way to get your foot in the door and gain experience with an organization where you may not yet be able to pass the interview process for a full-time role. TL;DR - Absolutely. It's a great way to get your foot in the door. To help your chances of getting interviews, build up a solid project portfolio that you can showcase on sites like LinkedIn in order to attract professional attention.

Thank you for the detailed response! This gives me hope and I’ll will now look into it.