If you have experience solving hard problems that helps. I had the good fortune of doing so in graduate school. That lead to a job solving another totally unrelated hard problem, with a technology stack totally unrelated to my graduate work. Once I had two gigs like that, the only people who responded to my resume's were people looking for someone to work with immature technology, or had a very hard problem to solve.

Also once you decide that you want to have a professional career jumping on technology grenades, do not work as an employee. I made that mistake. The nature of grenade jumping is that your are asked to solve a hard problem that needs to be solved in a short time, if you are an employee this amounts to massive hours, (70-90 hour work weeks), of unpaid overtime. Work as a contractor and be sure to bill for every hour. Or be sure to get a very healthy option grant if it is a promising start up. My life has been much happier once I started doing that.

Also be sure to work out, this sort of work takes a severe toll on your health if you do it for 20-30 years.

I could not help but misread #3 as "be willing to talk to yourself a lot".