Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work. It's not un-doable but you'll be much better served looking for work in a place where 80% of the value of the economy doesn't revolve around Washington-type work.

While it's true that .gov work is huge in DC metro (and extending to Baltimore), there are MANY companies completely outside, or on the periphery, and even more if you just want to eliminate military jobs.

Amazon has large AWS offices, plus HQ2 is spinning up. Google and Microsoft both have substantial presences (albeit much of that is .gov work). Walmart has their innovation centre here (Walmart Labs?). Oracle. VW of A. Several universities. Smaller companies like Ellucian (my employer). Freddie and Fannie (.gov-adjacent). The list is long.

And Capital One Bank has a massive complex in McLean/Tysons. It's not their HQ (which is in Richmond), but there has to be a few thousand employees here.

I think people are misinterpreting my comment... there _are_ non-defense/government jobs in the area but they are dwarfed by the number of such jobs because of the pervasive nature of the aforementioned entities. When I lived in the area more than 90% of LinkedIn recruiter messages that I got were about these jobs. This ceased being the case after I moved even when I was still in the defense contracting industry.