Jira Admin & Planning Center of Excellence Lead (Outcome-Based Planning)

We're looking for a hands-on Jira Admin with deep expertise in Atlassian's ecosystem to design, validate, implement, and own an outcome-based planning system across Jira Premium, Atlassian Goals, and Jira Product Discovery (JPD).

You'll lead the client's move from a custom Jira hierarchy (Initiative → Work Plan → Milestone → Epic → Story) into outcome-based quarterly planning (Objectives → Strategic Plays → Business Outcomes → Product Outcomes → Epics → Stories), run a small Planning Center of Excellence that teaches product groups how to work in the new model, and build the cost visibility leadership needs to decide what to fund.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the Planning Center of Excellence: hands-on training, documentation, office hours, and pairing with teams adopting the new model.
• Assess the current Jira Premium hierarchy, workflows, boards, reporting model, and internal executive-reporting tool.
• Validate whether Atlassian Goals is the right foundation for the strategy layer.
• Design the model for Strategic Objectives, Strategic Plays, Business Outcomes, and Product Outcomes, and their relationships to Teams, Jira work items, and success measures.
• Develop an approach for calculating and tracking the cost of Objectives, Strategic Plays, and Business Outcomes.
• Define when to use Atlassian Goals, Jira Premium hierarchy/custom issue types, Jira Product Discovery, native Jira, marketplace apps, or custom development.
• Establish the quarterly outcome-based planning operating model: approvals, cross-team capacity/time-boxing, milestone/release patterns, workflow/board/permission design.
• Prototype the recommended approach in a sandbox and define a safe migration path to production.
• Design reporting patterns for executives, product leaders, and delivery teams.
• Document the recommended architecture, workflows, governance model, and implementation roadmap.

Required Skills & Experience:

• Deep hands-on expertise with Jira Cloud Premium and Advanced Roadmaps/Plans.
• Strong, current expertise with Atlassian Goals (nested goals, measures, Teams, work-item links, permissions, APIs).
• Practical experience with Jira Product Discovery and its connection to product strategy and delivery planning.
• Experience designing Jira hierarchy models for large or complex product organizations.
• Experience moving organizations from output/project-based planning to outcome-based, quarterly planning.
• Strong understanding of Jira workflows, boards, permissions, custom fields, automation, releases, and reporting.
• Experience with capacity planning, estimation, or cost modeling for product/portfolio work.
• Experience evaluating and implementing Atlassian Marketplace apps.
• Experience training and enabling teams adopting portfolio and strategy management in Jira.

Nice to Have:

• Experience leading or standing up a Center of Excellence or similar enablement function.
• Experience with Lean Portfolio Management, OKRs, or similar outcome-management approaches.
• Familiarity with GraphQL/API integrations and data-platform-driven metric updates.
• Experience with Jira migrations, sandbox pilots, and phased rollout plans.
• Atlassian certifications are a plus, though practitioner experience matters more.