It isn't for me to say what you should look for. I can tell you my experience of what employers want, but then again most employers probably want .NET experience, so what most employers want isn't the most important thing. The question is, how do you find the one employer that's right for you!
One way to find a middle ground between your interests and a company's concerns is to restate your interest in terms of the company culture. For example: I'm looking for a team that owns its stack and uses that ownership to do interesting and disruptive things with its product. For that reason, I'm less interested in the size of the company than in the way it approaches technology. If a team is working from algorithms and bit -twiddling on up, I'm sure I'll be happy.
That answer might apply to any company from Apple on down to a YCombinator startup.
One way to find a middle ground between your interests and a company's concerns is to restate your interest in terms of the company culture. For example: I'm looking for a team that owns its stack and uses that ownership to do interesting and disruptive things with its product. For that reason, I'm less interested in the size of the company than in the way it approaches technology. If a team is working from algorithms and bit -twiddling on up, I'm sure I'll be happy.
That answer might apply to any company from Apple on down to a YCombinator startup.