Lead Jira Engineer

Catworkx is a company with over 25 years of experience in agile transformation and IT automation, seeking a Lead Jira Engineer to serve as the technical anchor for enterprise-scale Jira environments. This role involves leading optimization initiatives, establishing governance frameworks, and ensuring seamless integration for portfolio management capabilities.

Responsibilities:

• Lead comprehensive Jira optimization initiatives across enterprise environments with 6,000+ users
• Develop and execute normalization strategies to standardize Jira usage patterns, configurations, and best practices across diverse teams and departments
• Assess current-state Jira configurations and identify inconsistencies, redundancies, and areas of technical debt
• Design future-state architecture that balances standardization with legitimate business unit requirements
• Create and maintain a multi-phase optimization roadmap with clear milestones and success metrics
• Oversee the alignment of workflows, permission schemes, notification schemes, issue type schemes, and field configurations to support BigPicture consistency and data integrity
• Establish and enforce configuration governance standards that prevent configuration sprawl and ensure long-term maintainability
• Rationalize redundant schemes and consolidate where appropriate while preserving critical business logic
• Design and implement scheme hierarchies that support both enterprise-wide standards and legitimate department-specific needs
• Create configuration documentation and decision frameworks for ongoing governance
• Ensure Jira configuration decisions actively support and enhance BigPicture portfolio management capabilities
• Validate that issue hierarchies, custom fields, and workflow states align with BigPicture box structures and reporting requirements
• Identify and remediate configuration patterns that create adoption risks or data quality issues in BigPicture
• Collaborate with BigPicture Engineers to ensure seamless integration between Jira and portfolio management layers
• Proactively address technical dependencies and configuration prerequisites for successful BigPicture rollouts
• Provide expert-level hands-on configuration of complex Jira schemes, custom fields, and automation rules
• Execute technical implementations of standardized configuration patterns across projects and business units
• Build and test configuration changes in sandbox environments before production deployment
• Troubleshoot configuration issues and performance bottlenecks that impact user experience or BigPicture functionality
• Implement configuration migrations and consolidation activities during optimization phases

Requirements:

• 5+ years of hands-on Jira administration and configuration experience in enterprise environments
• Expert-level knowledge of Jira schemes: workflows, permission schemes, notification schemes, field configurations, issue type schemes, and screen schemes
• Deep understanding of Jira project architecture, issue hierarchies, and data models
• Proven experience optimizing and normalizing Jira configurations across large user bases (3,000+ users)
• Strong proficiency with JQL, Jira automation, and Jira APIs
• Strategic thinking with hands-on execution capabilities
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills
• Detail-oriented approach to configuration management
• Change management and organizational influence abilities
• Customer success mindset with focus on adoption and user experience
• Atlassian certifications (ACP-400, ACP-620, or equivalent advanced certifications)
• Experience with Jira Cloud implementations
• Knowledge of scripting languages (Groovy, Python) for advanced automation
• ScriptRunner or other Jira app configuration experience
• Background in ITIL, ITSM, or service management frameworks