Oof. I read that you're not in the NCR so it might be a bit tougher. You're probably well-aware, but wanted to preface that since the reaching out you do will be more of a sniper rifle than a shotgun, haha...

LinkedIn is not bad to find teams that are in your geographical location and maybe working on projects that may be relevant but unless they are posting, you don't necessarily if they are active to respond to requests. Plus, not sure if you can message without connecting. I personally wouldn't accept a request from someone I know, but that's me.

So one way of doing research is using Jobs.gc.ca. The annoying thing is that you can only filter on geographical location on current postings, not archived ones. But for example, if you go to Search archives and check postings from the last year, you can comb through them and see if you can get hints on where to go.

For example, assuming you are in Toronto, I found a person who was appointed to a CS-03 Tech Advisor position in Burlington at ECCC. It seemed more like a BA role but I found the person on GEDS and started moving up and down the org chart. I found a directorate that has an office on Dufferin St., just south of Steeles. So if you're in the Toronto region, that could be a lead. Looked at a few appointments that were done in that office (presumably), looks like the poster asked for OOP (Java, C++, C#, it said), so assume it's a Java shop for the most part.

(This seems super tedious, but I assume there's no sweet Google My Maps of software development offices in the Federal government. If there is one, would love to know, haha...)