Jira Administrator

Title: Jira Administrator Location: Phoenix, AZRemote: NoHybrid: Yes --3 days/week onsiteContract: YesPay Rate: 40$/hr W2 Convert to Perm: Yes, this job is expected to convert to full time employment at 100-125K/YearContact: Brian Merin; 215-913-8857; OverviewSenior-level expert who combines deep technical administration skills with the ability to wrangle the IT operations toward standardized, scalable, and best-practice use of the Atlassian Cloud suite (Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Assets, and Confluence). You will act as the internal Atlassian SME, driving adoption of best practices across Jira Software, Jira Service Management (JSM), Assets, and Confluence, while maintaining flexibility for additional products and add-ons. Someone that will take a consultative approach to their current environment. Key Responsibilities:• Perform comprehensive assessments of current Jira, JSM, Assets, and Confluence implementations and deliver actionable best-practice recommendations.•Design, implement, and maintain enterprise-grade configurations: workflows, custom fields, permission schemes, filters, dashboards, reports, boards, and Confluence space architecture.•Design, implement, and maintain integrations with non-Atlassian platforms such as Netbox, LucidChart, Okta, Gitlab, Crowdstrike, and others.•Establish and encourage standardization of Atlassian utilization while preserving usability for diverse IT teams.•Proactively gather requirements, evaluate use cases, and translate them into scalable frameworks rather than fulfilling one-off requests.•Evaluate free and very-low-cost Atlassian Marketplace apps. Perform proofs-of-concept, provide proposals with cost/benefit analyses, and deploy into operation. Coordinate with other IT teams to plan low-impact rollout and extract maximum value.•Engage with the Atlassian Community and vendor support portals to influence roadmaps and resolve complex issues.•Own long-term maintenance, performance optimization, troubleshooting •Mentoring of power users and junior administrators.•Implement and manage Project Portfolio Management / Project Office capabilities in Jira (Advanced Roadmaps, structure, hierarchy, cross-project reporting).Required Qualifications & Skills:•7+ years of hands-on Atlassian administration experience (Jira Software, JSM, Confluence, Assets) in Cloud environments.•Proven track record of performing best-practice assessments and driving organization-wide Atlassian transformation.•Expert-level knowledge of Jira schemes (workflow, permission, issue type, screen, field configuration), JQL, Automation, dashboards, and reporting.•Strong experience designing and governing Confluence spaces, templates, and macros at enterprise scale.•Demonstrated ability to evaluate, pilot, and operationalize Marketplace add-ons, identifying free or very-low cost options to obtain good-enough functionality in a budget-constrained environment. • Excellent requirements-gathering and stakeholder management skills — comfortable reaching out, facilitating workshops, and creating multi-phase plans to incrementally accommodate researchers’ requests over time – while not overwhelming IT project contributors.Soft skills:Proactive wrangler, strategic thinker; ability to pivot and adjust to emergent priorities in a dynamic, entrepreneurial organization; diplomatic but firm on governance within a cordial, mission-driven research setting.This is not a reactive support role — it is a strategic position, constantly engaging to identify and deliver process improvements, and focused on governance, standardization, long-term optimization, and preparing the platform for additional deployments across IT.Contact: Brian Merin; 215-913-8857;