[CaliforniaKarl]

I bet you'll find something.

It's really easy to assume that "bay area" means places like Meta, Apple, etc.. But there are others.

I'll take the opportunity to plug that at Stanford, we've got a small pile of open IT positions (42, per https://careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/search/12458736), covering technologies as plain as Python & Java, to as weird as Oracle. Some positions are fixed-term, if you just want to 'get your feet wet'.

Another set of companies that folks often miss are the auto companies. For example, Ford has a posting for a Senior Simulation Software Engineer, job ID 20901, which wants someone with experience in C++ and Python. The job's location says Michigan, but if you dig in it also lists Ford's office in Palo Alto (in the Stanford Research Park) I know Toyota Research Institute is in Los Altos, though I don't know their open positions. And besides Tesla, there's also Rivian and Zoox.

The map at the bottom of https://stanfordresearchpark.com/community/ gives you a good overview of the types of companies in one chunk of Palo Alto. And there are many other places besides that!