I am not a lawyer, so this is just personal experience, not advice.

Networking is everything, most of my gigs have come from trusted contacts I worked with as an employee in a subsidiary (opened by a US company) in my own country.

Startups help here because people tend to move around with a trusted group of people. Every gig expands your network and builds more trust, so cracking those first few opportunities are important.

Navigating legal/contractual: I can't read minds but you're probably overthinking this before you've secured a gig. Contractually, things are similar to working with a company at home. A lot of the complexity will be on the US company's side for how they deal with the expense of dealing with the expense of you for their reporting requirements to state authorities like the IRS. This is why your network is so important, you have to be valuable enough so they're willing to pay for the friction.

Most of your friction and hassle will come from dealing with foreign income within your own country's tax authority. Get help from professionals but it's not insurmountable.

how do you approach your network - if you don't mind me asking, what language do you use when reaching out to your network. I'm seeing my network mostly turn cold shoulder.