It's really up to you to go out and find them. I suggest looking for local meetups and talking to engineers who are working in those small businesses. Get to know the people in your community running these small businesses.

Most of our hires were introduced through people I know. In a small business this is often the only logical way to hire because you already have some level of trust with the referrer and thus they've acted as the first gateway for a candidate to get through (and they usually can vouch for the candidate's work).

Also, many small businesses are concerned largely with staying alive and making a profit, so that may mean they will be focused on "non-interesting" problems of making the business operate well. Factor this into your decision as to who you want to work for as well.

I guess that's the issue- where I'm living right now, there is absolutely no "tech scene". There are no local meetups that don't require me driving 1.5+ hours one way to get to, which I can't manage to do on a regular basis. I'd love to move somewhere where there's more people who are like-minded, but I can't just up and move without a job waiting for me.

The general consensus I'm hearing is that the way you get hired at a smaller company is just through networking, but if there's no network near me to speak of am I just simply out of luck?

And yes, I'm aware that I will have to work on some "non-interesting" problems, but I'm okay with that as long as I feel like my work is being valued by my coworkers and that I'm not just another drone.

I'll second this, it really is a "scene." When hiring or looking for contract work, people reach out to their network first and it almost always produces someone. Reaching out to the open market is seen as a last resort and rarely happens.

Also, chatting with random people at coworking spaces could be fruitful.

If you think that at a lifestyle business you can just philosophize about 'architecture', write 3 prototypes and hone every last function for aesthetics, you're sadly mistaken. When you're small everyone has to do everything, you need to ship so bills can be paid, and customers are always nr 1, not the software. I like 'small' too, but it's not like working at a lifestyle business is like having tenure. Owning one that has plenty of cash at hand might be, but working for one isn't.

When I worked for other people I had great success by cold-calling firms that interested me and that I felt could use my skills. They didn't always have job listings but they liked my genuine interest in their products.

If you're in Seattle, have you looked at software engineering positions at the UW? You can find plenty of interesting problems to work on, with world-class peers in the faculty and students.