Comment Depends on how you present yourself, and to whom.. (Score 1) 435
At our age, the resume says it all. While not originally a technical opportunity, after three years in academia I got a cold-call to interview for a testing job from a major defense contractor based just on my resume. Got that job, used the first three years with them to demonstrate technical chops, and was able to successfully compete for a senior engineer position, happiness ever since. Now, it's not a coding job, but I'm responsible for technical direction, setting the expectations and mentoring for both our developers/engineers and our suppliers' folks. I keep my skills by hobby-programming and such; indeed, I learned networking by dorking around in the basement with 10BASE-T stuff; now, I occasionally conduct failure investigations on long-haul network problems.
Also, look for a company with a solid technical culture; mine has a technical fellowship that forms the basis for senior technical promotions (note: I'm not in that fellowship, replaced that with advanced degrees), also look for signs that they value the technical input. Oh, the most telling aspect of that where I work is that there are separate and distinct paths for pursuing technical versus management careers; I can't just walk into work one day and suddenly find I'm supervising people and trying to figure out earned-value reporting shit. Conversely, managers are specifically forbidden from sitting as members of our engineering boards, and nothing gets done until our boards hack on it.
I Just Love Where I Work...