why there are very low numbers of cloud admins

[Akhil]

In India still admin's are working on DC , server's. 
There are very few opening's on cloud admin.

[Greg Elofson]

The Cloud-only engagements I've been on are often very budget driven. They are trying to avoid the higher costs (personnel, hardware) that go with a DC installation. They try to use the Team-Based self-serve approach, Feeling like they had a glorified Trello board, rely on outside consultants to "set things up" and learn the rest on their own. And they proceeded to create projects and grow--until the whole thing imploded because they had no capable Jira Admin talent.

Jira stand-alone had that history early on,  too. A group would download Jira. They had enough sysadmin skills to install it. Time would pass, and the whole thing would melt down when they would try, for example, an upgrade. 

The other scenario is the standalone migration to cloud. This can include a lot of TLC in the migration (eg. things lost on scrum boards and such), and giving up on various add-ons. Security concerns slow this down. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Generally, there's a lot less need for dedicated admins on Cloud systems, because there's a lot less for them to do than Server/DC admins.

I've spent the last 20 years doing what Greg talks about - administrating, upgrading and, more recently, migrating Server systems to Cloud.  Adaptavist has an "Atlassian Admin as a service" offering which I compare with what the consultants do to measure the amount of admin work the two types of system need, and it's very clear that Cloud admin time is a small fraction of the admin a server/DC install needs.

I suspect that's why you're not seeing a lot of jobs - people who move on to Cloud probably only need a couple of very part-time admins, unlike the larger server/DC users, who will often need 2-5 people, some full-time.

[vikram]

Agreed with @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- 

What I see from my experience is for Cloud Admins its one time configuration of Jira as per the organization polocies after that their won't be lot of work for Jira Admins in cloud, but for DC and Server, there are upgrades, fixes, Vulnerability fixes, integrations, new features addition which need to be maintained all by DC/Server Admins. 

 Vikram P

[Lorenzo Phillips]

I agree with @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- as we've seen a significant decrease in clients needing an admin since cloud gained traction in the market in favor of just needing more one-off work/tasks. But we saw this coming a long time ago and have pivoted to offering support packages. Our clients sign up for this so when they need an admin or expertise, they have us on retainer and get it quickly. So while we've seen a decrease in engaging our consultants with cloud clients like we used to for Server/DC, we've seen a significant increase in our support retainer offerings.

Also, Atlassian now has templates for the entire business. Once upon a time, we'd engage with Sales/Marketing, Legal, Facilities, etc. because they needed Jira customized. But now they have templates to start with and team-managed projects that allow them to customize their projects on their own--not needing an admin. Again, reducing the amount of work us admins used to do.

Anyway, just wanted to offer my .2 cents and support @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- response (not that he needs it as he is an Atlassian OG (🤓🤪)-lol.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Always good to hear I'm not alone!  :-)

[Edgar Spence]

The only reason I have any involvement with being a Jira Cloud Admin is because the company I landed at had an ancient custom-built system that was failing, and we needed something to replace it with.  I learned, then implemented, the Cloud solution and now I just get tasked with new project creation and training on the system.  Not a big portion of my day.  Maybe if you found a company in need of a change for their ticket system you could utilize that knowledge more.  I cannot see making a whole career on it, however, unless you are consulting with multiple companies and setting up then support it.  I deal with other platforms more frequently.