The tech industry is among the first industries to embrace telecommuting and remote positions, but majority fall under helpdesk or customer care jobs. Today, you can find a plethora of work-from-home tech jobs as varied as social media management to cloud engineering with pay rates almost comparable to their office-based versions.
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The benefits of work-at-home tech jobs over office-based positions are obvious. Aside from skipping the hassles of daily commute, these jobs allow flexibility to students, single-parents, primary caregivers, or other types of employees that couldn’t support their lives’ special requirements if they’ve stayed behind a cubicle.
The downside though is that pay rates for home-based work are often lower than their office counterparts. But if you’re OK with this fact and you’re after the flexibility of working in your pajamas full-time, discover what kinds of jobs are in store within these 8 underrated tech sub-niches with increasing work-from-home opportunities:
8 Work at Home Tech Opportunities
1) App development – The world of apps has a long way to go. Even if it seems that iOS and Android is already saturated with apps, you have to understand that as long as smartphones exist, there will always be apps that need updates and apps that need developed. Read up more about an app developer’s job here.
2) Consulting – Consulting is the best gateway to home-based work and can be a career path chosen by any senior IT employee. Consultants are paid for their opinions, assessment, and any other input an organization requires. This can be as simple as being quoted in a magazine, or as contributor of a third-party project. Consultants may earn up to $80k/year or more depending on the amount of projects.
3) Cyber security – Ever read on the news about kids hacking Facebook or discovering Google bugs, only to get rewarded in the end? The field of cybersecurity is a lot like consulting, since experience and skills weigh more than education. You can go about this as a freelancer or “bug bounty hunters” as they passionately call themselves, or find a work-from-home position instead.
4) QA – The tech industry is big on quality assurance, from assessing relevancy of search engine results, to testing websites or apps before launch. If you love perfection and have the skills to put to good use, the QA route will give you a ton of options. The SQA (software quality assurance) team, for example, is responsible for monitoring engineering processes and methods used to ensure end-product meets guidelines set by the customer. QAs are available in every subsector, so discover opportunities in your line of work first before anywhere else.
5) ecommerce and mcommerce – ecommerce will continue to get a huge chunk of the business sales pie. With this continuous demand, expect many home-based opportunities for web designers, creators, internet marketers, and other related fields. The cool thing about the ecommerce/mcommerce industry is that job requirements would vary significantly depending on the type of ecommerce store.
6) Cloud – The demand in work-from-home cloud engineers will increase, as more and more companies adapt to changing infrastructures and server virtualization. The roles will depend on the type of cloud-based technology and programming languages used, but expect to be paid higher than ordinary computer engineers. Of course, you should be very familiar with leading cloud-based tech such as Windows 10, Office 365, Azure Active Directory, and more.
7) Software and web programming – Like app development, software and web programming remains an in-demand field regardless of how saturated it may seem. IBM, Apple and Microsoft often entice highly-skilled programmers with telecommuting options for their office-based positions. But if you’ve been handling projects on your own for years, it will be more lucrative if you go freelance and work under two or more clients at a time.
8) IT project management – There will be a 15% projected growth in managerial positions as more IT teams are assigned on telecommute and work-from-home jobs. Salaries of IT project managers or “virtual managers” are in the $120k range, but can go higher depending on the number of team members assigned to the manager.
The Bottom Line
More and more people prefer work-from-home careers because they are able to reduce stress, juggle parenting with work, manage a chronic illness, and generally find more time at home, or play. And since the opportunities available for home-based tech jobs now go beyond helpdesk and customer support, people with varying levels of experience have more choices.
If you’re interested telecommuting to one of these careers, FlexJobs or Indeed.com are probably the best job search sites to begin your search and find something that would fit your skill set.
