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Experience as a remote freelance consultants for Confluence and Jira Service Desk?

Markus Raab

Hi beautiful people,

I used to work intensively with Confluence and also Jira Service Desk for about 1,5 years in a corporate environment (software developing company, 100 employees). I am interested to go on working with Atlassian products, however, I would like to get gigs as an Atlassian Remote Freelancer.

However, from my previous experience, I must say it feels this is more a corporate world gig and not a freelance gig as it requires a deep knowledge about an organization's processes, people, culture. What do you think about that?

https://www.himarkus.com

Comments

edwin vasquez_f9df79

Hello Markus,

I think you are right for the most part. The majority seems to hire someone internally to manage their Atlassian apps, but there are a lot of Atlassian partners that also offer consulting and management services. This allows companies to "outsource" that work. I have not seen many free lance opportunities for the Atlassian apps.

Markus Raab

I saw Atlassian freelancers on Upwork I think, but I am not sure if they actually get the ability to work. It's just a different kind of job than e.g., working as a customer support agent. A good hint though to have a look at some Atlassian partners who occasionally need to be able to scale - and perhaps accept remote support.

Alexander Bondarev_x6gjf3

Hi, @Markus Raab !

I think it is possible to work like freelancer if you are good in analytic and Jira/Confluence gui-administring, so you can help companies to correctly use, help with configuring to their needs products such JSD and Confluence.

Also you can give them advice of any apps that can help them to reach the company's goals.

Patrick Cartier

Hi @Markus Raab ,

This is essentially what I do. I have a few customers on Upwork and a few off. You're right in thinking there isn't enough work in one place alone (without it being "corporate")

Think about your previous experience administering about 100 users, I bet that Atlassian administration wasn't your sole responsibility (of course correct me if I am wrong). At that size if organizations need help, they are usually willing to outsource it since it doesn't make sense to hire someone full time. If you latch on to an organization like this and they grow, it could wind up as full time work eventually.

Most of these opportunities will allow for remote work, you just need to adjust your schedule to theirs so that you are available when they are, otherwise things can take much longer than necessary.

What will help you get hired by a partner is having two Atlassian Certifications. Partners are required to have a certain number of employees for each level. You might want to read into the partner program a little bit to see if it fits for you. Maybe you could even start your own partner some day.

Hope this helps! If you have any other questions feel free to reach out!

edwin vasquez_f9df79

You are right. I totally forgot about UpWork.

Markus Raab

That is true, I think that companies do not actually know so much what is possible out of the box, what can be reached with some configuration, what can be workarounded by designing things a bit differently, and where it makes sense to consider investing in plugins and if so which plugins (obviously they call it "apps" now).

I also understand that it actually requires many, many years of experience with different Atlassian products to be able to provide this kind of consultation. Best would be to gain this experience by working for many years in a few different companies as an Atlassian Administrator or by working as a consultant or tech guy with an Atlassian Partner and learn so much till one is able to do it as a freelancer.

For myself, I love the Atlassian products, I am proud of what I created at the last company I was working for, but I also see that 1,5 years is simply not enough to work as a "full-stack" consultant. Thus, I am trying to figure out if there is a way of specializing in one smaller field, e.g. start with Confluence only or Customer Support with Atlassian products.

Markus Raab

If someone wants to start out as an Atlassian Freelancer I would assume that a lot depends on the company that uses or wants to use the Atlassian products. If I think about the major criteria I would say it comes to ...

company size
> 10 or > 100 or > 1000 employees is quite a difference and I would guess it is more difficult to land a freelance gig if the company is > 100 respectively > 1000. Please correct me if my guess is wrong. Larger companies simply will have knowledgeable people and resources in-house.
branch
without knowing any statistics many companies using Atlassian products are probably software developing companies or come from the tech field, thus they have probably quite a lot of internal know-how and understanding of software configuration, administration, and adaption to internal processes themselves which makes it more challenging to appear as the professional who solves all their problems
level of experience + period of application
it is for sure a huge difference whether an organization does have (1) Atlassian solutions implemented already for a decade or if they (2) just want to start out. For the first, it needs a lot of time and experience to understand and consult in a professional way.

Considering my thoughts, this must mean the easiest way to start as an Atlassian Freelancer would be with a small company from the non-tech branch that just wants to start out with Atlassian for the very first time.

I think there is a difference if the responsibility of the (corporate) job is the actual administration of the users and platform only (permissions, new spaces, plugin/app management, internal support, etc.) or if it is about restructuring the entire system and corporate processes to get full potential of the Atlassian products and interfaces to other systems.

Atlassian products can as we know change the way how people collaborate. Just install and configuration would never be enough to get the return of the investment. It is so much about the people in the end who must see the advantage of using Confluence / Jira.

Thanks for sharing your experience Patrick!

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