[gtani]

Don't give up on mainline, but branch out to small/medium bus ops. You have to go to as many meetups as you can, perfect your elevator pitch, make github and online presence look nice, etc.

One niche, there's lots of people looking for help coding stock/futures trading apps in sierra chart, ninja and multi trader, etc. These are in c++, c#/framework, python, mostly.

On the latter, work your network, seek out busines owners/managers who are in need of IT/web/database/email list type work and have people vouch for your tech cred/integrity (very important)