[kcole16]

Start talking to local dev shops and startups that heavily use Python and offer to work for free (as you mentioned).

Most will probably deny you due to lack of resources (onboarding volunteers still takes engineering hours), but one might take a chance.

Shoot me an email if you want to chat (address in my profile). I was in the exact same spot as you 18 months ago, and have been employed as an engineer since then.