Well, I'm not completely out, just at a contractor that does predominantly unclassified work.
It was a combination of finding someone to take a chance on me and the classification of my last program easing. When I started, "I do stuff" was about the extent of what I was allowed to say. When I left the name and nature of the program had been declassified so I could at least talk about some concepts in detail, though still not specific problems.
I ended up in NLP, which is similar enough to signal processing that the company was willing to roll the dice. I did have to take a pay cut, though.
It was a combination of finding someone to take a chance on me and the classification of my last program easing. When I started, "I do stuff" was about the extent of what I was allowed to say. When I left the name and nature of the program had been declassified so I could at least talk about some concepts in detail, though still not specific problems.
I ended up in NLP, which is similar enough to signal processing that the company was willing to roll the dice. I did have to take a pay cut, though.