Bad timing, but universities are engaging places to work. I did sysadmin for one, and it was a great experience, meeting scientists and some Nobel Prize winners. Some of the labs hire SWE's full time for projects that exceed the grad student workforce. Some universities run national labs, whose status right now is uncertain, but postings will say yes or no.

Look at companies in the AEC sector. Pay is lower than straight tech, but a lot of exciting real world and applied problems to dig in to. All the fun stuff these days is computation and advanced fabrication based. Even something closer in application to the jobsite like building information modeling still has room to grow in terms of tech implementation.

Your skill set would be lucrative to a big construction or engineering firm and they pay well. Architecture firms solve the funnest problems, which is what you get in return for the lower pay.

Gotta be honest, every non-tech company I've worked for was better than "tech" companies. Non-tech companies have a defined business and it is clear whether or not the tech is helping further their goals. Unlike tech companies, where the tech is the goal, so it can get really fuzzy as to whether or not your work is helping or is just noise.

So I can give you a generalized "yes" answer to whether or not we have good experiences in non-tech. We do. Yeah, go for it.