I haven't, but outside the DoE (but still in national lab land) my brother worked at APL and I interviewed there (after hearing all the praise he had for it). I

I haven't, but outside the DoE (but still in national lab land) my brother worked at APL and I interviewed there (after hearing all the praise he had for it). I loved interviewing with them. Everyone, even when they severely outclassed my own education level (I have a bachelor's in journalism and am a self-taught software engineer, and I was talking to a couple of PhDs with many years of experience), were super personable, humble, and passionate about their area of expertise. They made me feel like I was already part of their team even when I was just interviewing (they even went out of their way to make international interviewing work since I live abroad). If they'd made me an offer, I almost certainly would have taken it. Great people and by far the best interviewing experience I've ever had (though in retrospect, interviewing for a position requiring clearance while living abroad was probably an uphill battle). As others have said, the work was highly self-directed. As for the need for software engineers, it was definitely there according to my brother. The scientists he worked with were capable in their field, but they needed someone capable of translating their models into something that would execute on a computer. I don't know what exactly he worked on, of course, but he's an ML specialist and was pretty interested in CUDA programming around that time, so maybe that's a clue what kind of skills he was applying. Anyway, maybe something to check out similar to the DoE network.