Very cool to see this over here :)
A past GSoC project of mine ported the entire Lua test suite to the NetBSD kernel space: https://github.com/gszr/luatests (it needs to be updated... it's been on my to-do list). See also https://github.com/gszr/luaio for some cool IO bindings for Lua in kernel.
First of all, thank you for sharing your story. As others have mentioned, having a portfolio goes a long way. Contributing to open-source projects is a great place to start; it gives you exposure to software being used in the real world and sometimes inspiration for your own projects too. Also check out AngelList (angel.co); there are lots of positions worldwide that are open to remote employment. Wishing you the best!