7 IT Jobs That Can Be Done From Anywhere… Including Home!

Even before the world as we knew it changed a couple of years ago, many IT professionals aspired to work from home, at least part of the time. Working in IT opens you up to plenty of those where you can work from home basically all the time. 

Before the pandemic, if you wanted to work remotely and have amazing flexibility, a job as a salesperson or sales engineer would've been ideal. This is largely still true, but for these types of jobs, travel is often expected if not required. You can find jobs with low travel requirements but should be aware that some will not keep you at home as much as you might want.

1. Software Engineer/DevOps

These two roles might not be exactly the same, but the end goal is. In recent years, as people were trying to reinvent themselves, the reflex answer always seemed to be “learn to code”. That’s where these come into play.

Not every organization has its own in-house staff to handle these items. Lots of firms are willing to outsource, and now more than ever before, outsourcing means you are working out of your home office.

2. Technical Support

While nowhere near as glamorous or as lucrative as coding can be, technical support representatives are a key part of many operations. And it’s a role that has long leant itself to be done remotely.

Before the pandemic, technical support roles were available for remote workers. These opportunities have some key requirements like a quiet workspace and strong home phone and internet service. If you can check off those boxes, being a tech support agent while at home is a nice job if you can land one.

Another perk of this type of job? If you are seeking flexible hours, support roles are often tied to shift work. Support desks, depending on the company, might cover the company’s operating hours (for internal staff) or could even be staffed around the clock for customer-facing help desks.

3. Security Operations

Information security is a hot area of IT right now. One area that features both entry-level positions and being able to work remotely is security operations. Traditionally, if you were tasked with working for a Security Operations Center (SOC), you might be asked to sit in an actual center, watching screens and responding to incidents. 

But now more than likely, you can work from home. Imagine this setup. You have a few monitors in front of you, watching the various dashboards and your emails, and are responding as needed. You could arguably work from anywhere.

It makes providing around-the-clock coverage a lot easier too-SOC staff can sit anywhere, in any time zone. While it might be the middle of the night for corporate HQ, you could have remote staff working during daylight covering things. 

4. Penetration Tester/Security Engineer

A security engineer could take many forms, depending on the organization and specializations. This could be someone who works on things like firewalls, maintaining and supporting an organization’s defenses. 

Pen testing can be especially attractive, as you could certainly work this freelance and make your own hours. Some tests will seek physical pen testing, meaning you would need to be on-site for some engagements. However, others would be 100% remote. A client might simply want to test how vulnerable certain systems are from anywhere outside of their network. 

These types of offensive and defensive security roles are also areas where some corporations are investing in, so a full-time role is just as possible as a freelance one.

5. System Architect

This is a very broad role and one that lends itself to remote work as well. You could be a system architect supporting many different platforms. Some might specialize in AWS or Azure or Google Cloud, as examples. If you are really motivated, you might learn and be able to support multiple systems, making yourself even more valuable.

The appeal for roles like these? More and more, these systems are in the cloud, meaning staff is not tied to a regional data center. System architects can sit anywhere and perform the job exactly as required.

6. Quality Assurance/Testing

If you like finding flaws in things, you might consider a job handling quality assurance or testing. It could cover new software, code updates or revisions, or some forthcoming new system architecture. And outside of some very specialized lab requirements where a home setup is not possible, many QA and testing opportunities are perfectly suited for a work-from-home situation. 

Coders do not often work a rigid schedule, and that’s another field in which you see a lot of people working from home. The flexibility of working from home can be a big boost to morale and productivity, and that’s good for everyone.

7. Technical Project Manager

Many of a project manager’s duties can be done, with good organization and communications, from anywhere.  And, as the pandemic made in-person interactions impossible, many saw PMs do what they had to do, without being on-site at all.

Even as companies return to some level of in-person, on-site engagement, a PM role is one where you don’t have to be on-site to manage things. A strong project manager can orchestrate a successful project delivery from start to finish without ever going on site.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are quite a few options to choose from if you are looking for a path that would allow you to work from home. As an IT professional, having that flexibility or perk is a wonderful thing. Many of these jobs offered the option to from home long before it was so prevalent, too. That may make some of these easier to find as remote opportunities, and it should also offer some assurances that any job you do land, may not suddenly change to an in-office situation.