Hello Blind crew! I'm currently a Technical Support Director in a MCL Northeast US city, and am looking to get back into an IC (individual contributor) role with lower stress. I'm looking into a few options. I'm not interested in going back to an IC role that is directly related to my current industry since doing so at a similar income would require large amounts of travel, and I want to continue working remotely. Looking for opinions from people who have made similar transitions from leadership back into technical IC roles. Here are some stats for context. 15 YOE in tech & integration The last 7 of those in management TC ~$160k USD with great benefits MCL US city The main options I'm looking at are Atlassian architect / JIRA administration. This could come with a pretty big pay cut, but I've seen salaries as high as $140k for senior roles. I took some practice tests for the certifications that would grant an Atlassian Certified Expert (highest Atlassian cert) and breezed through them. I've spent a lot of time building, customizing, and administering JIRA and Confluence instances as part of my day job over the years. With a few weeks of study I'd be comfortable taking the official tests, but it would be about $1000 overall in proctored test fees to do so. If I went this route, I would pursue experience with ServiceNow and other complementarity / competitive tools to augment my skill stack. Google Cloud Architect, Data Analyst, or Data Engineer certifications. These would be a steeper leaning curve, and tough to fit the after hours training time in with current responsibilities. I have technical experience in all three arenas, but I'd need to go through a full course to have a competitive knowledge level. Most of the highly rated courses recommend 6 months of study. However they allow for a more reusable skillset than Atlassian, and with that comes higher income potential. Generic Solutions Architect roles that focus on integration. For those that don't require a specific major stack knowledge (AWS / Salesforce / etc), I should be competitive with just resume reworking to focus on technical and communication skills, project experience, etc. What are your thoughts and experiences with this? #atlassian #jira #certification #google #solutionarchitect #dataengineer #dataanalyst #individualcontributor #cloudarchitect #cloud