The catch is that being government contract you, the guy doing the actual work, are beneath three or four layers of companies and bureaucracy and you get over engineered yet somehow too vague specs and projects that take 6 months just to get approved. But hey, the pay is good, and it’s for one of the better causes.

My other EU client, a much smaller non-tech company for whom I host their servers, has recently wanted to know if we depend on any US services, to reduce their exposure.

I believe you can get decent work just by advertising yourself as an expert in migrating code and data out of the US.

That said, the job and economy situation is a big question mark and appetite to invest has lessened dramatically so YMMV

The only exception to this rule I would say is AWS GovCloud, which also might be one of the only chill teams to work at across Amazon. It turns out having "only one way to do it", a system proved through a rigorous vetting process and a thoroughly worked-through contracting process leads to a pretty fantastic work environment for practitioners.

Trying to reimplement that piecemeal is for tougher men than me though. I think I'd rather sit on hot nails.

https://xkcd.com/705/