Jira Architect

Pay Rate: $95/hr on W2
Duration: 9 Months
Location: Remote (Must be available during PST hours for stakeholder meetings and workshops)

Project Overview

The organization is transitioning from a decentralized, project-specific Jira environment to a standardized enterprise Jira architecture. The initiative introduces a centralized Portfolio structure to manage organizational initiatives while linking work across Programs, Groups, and Departments.

A dedicated Jira Architect is needed to partner with the internal Work Structure team to finalize the enterprise architecture, remediate configuration inconsistencies, execute data migrations, and support organizational adoption through governance and training.

Responsibilities

Architecture & Solution Design

• Finalize the enterprise Jira issue hierarchy (Initiative Epic Story/Task/Bug) to support cross-project visibility and dependency management.
• Design and standardize the long-term space architecture across Portfolio, Procurement, Programs, Groups, and Departments.
• Implement and standardize Jira Goals to align strategic objectives with delivery work.
• Evaluate, improve, and scale the use of Atlassian Teams across the organization.
• Enhance Advanced Roadmaps and reporting to provide executive and project-level visibility into status, milestones, blockers, timelines, and goal completion.

Jira Administration & Technical Standardization

• Audit and consolidate redundant custom fields, workflows, statuses, resolutions, notification schemes, screen configurations, and field configurations.
• Design reusable workflow schemes supporting software engineering, operations, and administrative teams.
• Clean up obsolete components, labels, versions, permission groups, and historical project artifacts.
• Develop an archiving strategy for inactive projects.

Migration & Change Management

• Guide teams through the migration from legacy Jira projects into standardized shared spaces.
• Lead data mapping, bulk migration, and configuration cleanup while ensuring minimal disruption.
• Assist teams in aligning boards, plans, and team structures with the new enterprise architecture.
• Resolve competing business requirements related to workflows, fields, and Jira customization.

Training & Governance

• Deliver leadership training focused on portfolio visibility, dashboards, reporting, and capacity planning.
• Create documentation and provide knowledge transfer sessions for Jira administrators and power users.
• Develop a Jira Governance Playbook defining standards and change control processes for custom fields, workflows, projects, and integrations.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 3 years of hands-on Jira Administration experience.
• Strong experience administering Jira Cloud.
• Experience designing enterprise Jira environments supporting 100+ users across multiple teams or departments.
• Expertise with:
  • Workflow Design
  • Permission Schemes
  • Custom Fields
  • Screen Configurations
  • Jira Automation
• Experience building dashboards and executive-level reporting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Atlassian Certified Professional (ACP) or Jira Administrator Certification.
• Experience supporting large enterprise, government, research, or higher education environments.
• Familiarity with Agile portfolio management frameworks such as SAFe or PMI.
• Experience integrating Jira with Confluence.
• Experience leading enterprise Jira migrations, governance initiatives, and organizational change management.