Can't speak to startup space here much, but a few things about public sector work, of which there is a ton of tech stuff: 1. There's some element of "security clearance" for basically anything. It's still pretty minimal but worse than it used to be (e.g., last gig had them ask for my foreign-born father in law's birth cert). Lowest level stuff is often a "Public Trust" clearance that'd be required for almost anything involving access to a federal network. Feds still treat weed like it's 1950, which is a big hurdle for a lot of people, but does keep the competition down for roles. 2. There's a lot of cool public sector jobs and gigs, but the administrivia around even small gigs can be painful (e.g., a contract is contract), although on the other hand there's a lot of technical jobs (most?) that don't take more than an hour or so to interview for and don't involve any coding. If you build a reputation with the right people, you can get 6-figure, single person contracts which are easier to manage or setup a shop with friends. 3. Comp is very based on last level. If you want to live in Dupont / Logan Circle (do highly recommend) despite all the important stuff to be done in public sector agencies, you might struggle to afford to live unless you had a very high incoming income to report. Otherwise, recommend the financial regulators - SEC, CFTC, OCC, CFPB, to a lesser extent the Fed (Reserve). These guys always need tech help either directly or through contract. Every (non-"security") Fed salary you can lookup online, and I'd calculated the median at SEC was about $200k 5 years ago, which is proportional to their spending power generally.