Hi everyone! 👋 I'm starting to look for freelance development work, and I've heard Hired isn't the best platform for that anymore.
I'm hoping for some beginner-friendly recommendations. What are the best sites or communities to find freelance developer gigs in 2025? I'm especially interested in DevOps/SRE-type roles. Are there any platforms you've had good luck with, or ones I should avoid? Thanks in advance for any tips!
Hired is definitely geared more towards traditional full-time roles these days, so that's a fair point. For DevOps/SRE freelance work, I'd shift focus away from broad job boards and look at two avenues:
First, specialized platforms like Toptal or Gun.io. They're competitive, but the vetting means clients there are serious and often have complex infrastructure needs that fit your interests. I've found the gigs there tend to be longer-term and more architecturally involved than typical task-based freelancing.
Second, and this has been more fruitful for me, is engaging directly with communities where those problems are discussed. The DevOps/SRE subreddits, specific Discord servers for tools like Terraform or Kubernetes, and even LinkedIn groups focused on cloud cost management often have leads. It's less about applying to a posted job and more about noticing someone's detailed problem in a thread and offering a solution. That often turns into a direct contract.
Avoid the huge generic platforms like Upwork for this niche unless you're willing to spend immense time filtering. The signal-to-noise ratio on infrastructure work there is painfully low.
~jason