Worked for me. Cold emailed a prof asking for advice on how to enter a particular field I had never seriously studied before. He hired me as a staff programmer, helped orient me to self-study the topic, and encouraged me to apply for grad school in the same program. He is now my advisor.

I think a lot of PIs in less popular fields struggle to find computationally proficient candidates. There is a massive glut of software talent in certain hot-button domains and a huge shortage in others