When I worked at a DoD lab in the 90s, there were PhD students that were essentially employees. Their thesis work was directly tied to the lab’s work, and they were at the lab every day. I do not known the compensation arrangement, but it certainly appeared that they were paid as full-time employees (and may have been employed there before entering the PhD program). May be worth looking into something like that
Same is quite usual in some Cambridge University departments.
Also worth mentioning Scandinavian and Swiss universities treat PhDs like a regular industry job (job contract, paid at an acceptable discount wrt industry, pension contribution & other perks). This is how it should be everywhere.
Germany typically pays PhD students as research or teaching assistant (there are Grad schools in CS but this is the minority at least in my lab) When I started in 2005 the salary was even better than in many industry CS jobs (today the situation changed a bit). The problem I faced was that afterwards the PhD was not actually really valued by industry and I could not get myself to do a boring industry job without being paid 'adequately' to compensate for the loss of freedom. So I stayed at university again. I still have my freedoms but am kind of stuck in the academic system. If I would have gone to industry straight away my salary would probably be much higher by now.
One option is to look for a full-time job that does research but is also affiliated with a university. Think national laboratories or government positions. If you're smart about it, you may be able to make your full-time work count towards your thesis. Many of these affiliations also offer free/reduced tuition and you'll almost certainly be paid more than if you were a PhD student working for a university. Some will even pay your normal salary and allow you to take a year or more off to focus on school. The real difficulty is working a schedule that let's you take courses, but I suspect this is easier now with the amount of remote learning available. I'd also say to stay away from advisors who think there's only one way to skin this cat :-). It was my experience that they don't work as well with non-traditional students.
To echo what was said elsewhere, advisors/programs that mandate a certain time commitment may be looking to burden you with ancillary duties that don't fit well with a non-traditional approach. Some programs would not admit me unless I was willing teach a certain number of classes, even though I was self funded through my employer. Some tried to force me into a resident status for the same reasons; there was an expectation of working on campus as a means of paying for my keep. I attribute most of these attitude's as a lazy way of thinking where they apply the same template to every student, but I think you can find an alternate path if you're willing to be a bit creative/resilient/persistent.
Best of luck to you.