What are the industries employing software developers in the Tampa area? I assume there's some work in the insurance industry but not so much software industry work?
There's a wild amount of mechanical, electronic and software work going on in the Tampa Bay area.
Work is a lot more physical here than what I saw during 2+ decades in the SF Bay area (which was mostly software oriented, IME).
There's a ton of defense tech companies, medical tech, finance and (at least) 2 huge PCB assemblers are also here (Kimbal and Jabil).
St Pete and Tampa both have extensive areas filled with small physical production companies that can do machining, lasers, plastics, engineering, etc. The services can be pricey and a bit slow because they're built around defense/medical budgets, but unlike many other geographic areas, they are available domestically and folks tend to be really helpful.
Publix technology is a regular employer of .NET and big data developers, and fairly recession-resistant and remote friendly. Verizon, Geico, Amazon have offices in central Florida. Lots of e-commerce and hospitality companies like Disney, Universal, Etc. Not Tampa per se, but within the Tampa-Orlando megalopolis. No state income taxes (or infrastructure) and the weather is favorable. There are a lot of law firms, and most big 5 tech, consulting, and cyber companies have offices in the area.
Yeah St Pete is highly underrated in FL tech. Lot of interesting tech companies in the downtown core. I use to work for a Shopify-esque e-commerce platform that was built with React and Go in 2014. It was my first professional job after doing various jquery freelance work for a year prior.
I learnt quite a bit there about proper software engineering.
It makes me extremely happy to see the company still kicking around, with mostly the same people still but now in leadership positions.
Work is a lot more physical here than what I saw during 2+ decades in the SF Bay area (which was mostly software oriented, IME).
There's a ton of defense tech companies, medical tech, finance and (at least) 2 huge PCB assemblers are also here (Kimbal and Jabil).
St Pete and Tampa both have extensive areas filled with small physical production companies that can do machining, lasers, plastics, engineering, etc. The services can be pricey and a bit slow because they're built around defense/medical budgets, but unlike many other geographic areas, they are available domestically and folks tend to be really helpful.