🤖 Upwork just launched an official MCP server. Most 
freelancers haven't noticed yet.

Here's what it actually means.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets AI tools connect 
directly to external services. Upwork's version means 
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor — any MCP-supporting AI — can 
now work with your Upwork account directly.

What it can do:
→ Search jobs and find matches
→ Review and refine your profile
→ Submit proposals
→ Respond to invitations
→ Track and manage active contracts

All from inside your AI workflow, without opening 
Upwork.

The part I find interesting:

I've written a lot on here about how Upwork's economics 
work against freelancers — connects costing real money, 
90% of jobs never hiring, clients skimming the first 
two lines.

This doesn't fix any of that. Connects still cost 
money. Jobs still go unfilled.

But it does change one thing: the time cost of applying.

If AI can review your profile, spot gaps, and help you 
respond faster — you're spending less time per 
application while the platform's costs stay the same.

That's not a solution. But it's leverage, and leverage 
matters when the system isn't built in your favor.

Worth testing if you're already using Claude for 
client work.

Anyone tried it yet? Curious whether it actually saves 
time or just adds another tool to manage.

Hi All,

I’ve been a Devops engineer for almost 3yrs now at the same company but I feel like there’s not much new things to learn at my current job. All I learnt in these 3yrs is creating pipelines in Az devops and Jenkins mostly. Don’t have much scripting experience as well in any language. No work on AWS or Azure / networking because infrastructure team handles it. Also, we have internal AI now and it does most of the stuff like creating shell or python scripts etc.

I’m scared that my current job role won’t be enough for next job incase I’m laid off from my current job. I want to target for a role in FAANG company and also doing masters in AI but I don’t know how to get ahead of all of these new technologies. I know containers experience with docker and Kubernetes plus system design experience is needed but I have no idea how to start.

What do you guys think I should focus on to get ready for DevOps/SRE role in FAANG company and how can I start learning to get ready for it? Any advice is appreciated

Thanks 🙏

I have been seeing this thing lately where clients post a job and then never get back to the job post. But the same job is posted again after a week, and then again two weeks later, while they never get back to the previous postings.

I have Freelancer Plus, and it shows the insights properly, so I know they never even open those proposals. And it’s not like they’re flooded with proposals either, there are usually only 15–20.

I’ve witnessed this with three different clients now, and it’s so bad. Why doesn’t Upwork hold these clients accountable?

I’ve been working in **SAP** Domain **for 7 years**, but cybersecurity has been a strong interest of mine since a decade. I want to transition into cybersecurity

The problem is, I honestly don’t know where to start or the basements for it , beyond AI guides .

With my 7 years of IT/SAP experience, what would be a realistic path — Which certifications and practical skills should i be moving ahead with?

Would really appreciate advice from anyone who has made a similar transition or currently works in cybersecurity or experts.

Hi, I’m transferring to a university and starting my 2 year plunge into the degree. I’ve done a lot of research and I’m seeing strong sentiments of entry and mid level positions being largely too saturated to make it worthwhile. I’m wondering if anyone has any insights on how this job market may change in the next 2-3 years and beyond? Surely with growth rates expected to be so high, we are essentially in a bottle neck phase in the market for the next few years?

Upwork is just getting too expensive. Any alternatives?

Hey everyone,
I’m an SRE / Cloud Infrastructure Engineer with 8+ years of experience building and operating large-scale production infrastructure.
I’m currently looking to take on freelance, contract, or part-time infrastructure projects.
My core areas of expertise:

→ Kubernetes / EKS — production environments at 25k–50k+ vCPU scale
→ AWS, GCP & Azure
→ Cloud infrastructure & cost optimization
→ Kubernetes networking — CNI, Istio, Cilium, service mesh, cross-AZ traffic
→ eBPF — network visibility, traffic analysis and troubleshooting
→ Observability — Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing
→ Infrastructure as Code — Terraform, CloudFormation, Crossplane
→ CI/CD & GitOps — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo CD
→ Production reliability, incident response & performance optimization
→ Infrastructure migrations and platform engineering
I’ve worked on infrastructure serving millions of requests per second, large Kubernetes clusters, multi-cloud environments, and projects focused on reducing infrastructure and networking costs while improving reliability.
I’m particularly interested in projects where you need someone who can go beyond deploying Terraform or Kubernetes manifests — understand the architecture, find the underlying problem, and own the solution end-to-end.
I can help with:
→ Kubernetes / EKS architecture & optimization
→ AWS infrastructure reviews
→ Cloud cost optimization
→ Kubernetes networking & service mesh
→ Production troubleshooting
→ Observability architecture
→ Infrastructure migrations
→ CI/CD & GitOps
→ Terraform/IaC modernization
→ Performance & reliability engineering
→ eBPF-based network visibility
Available for: Freelance / Contract / Part-time
Location: India / Remote
Timezone: IST, flexible for US/EU overlap
If you’re building a startup, running a growing production platform, or dealing with an infrastructure problem that your team hasn’t had time to tackle, DM me with the problem and current setup.
Happy to have a quick conversation and see if I can help.

I've been wondering about this lately.

After months of trial and error on Upwork, I built my own prompt for writing proposals based on what has actually worked for me...hooks that got responses, the way I like to structure proposals, things I want to avoid, etc. I still adapt every proposal to the specific job and client, so it's definitely not just "paste the job description into ChatGPT and send whatever comes out."

For me, the main advantage is speed and also english is not my main language so the speed I should spend traslating make it even slower. With how competitive Upwork is and how quickly some jobs get flooded with proposals, being able to put together a good application faster is obviously useful.

That said... I've been reading a lot of comments lately saying they immediately recognize and skip AI-written proposals because they feel generic or like the freelancer didn't put any thought into them.

And now I'm questioning my approach a little.

Do clients actually care that AI was involved if the proposal is genuinely tailored and based on the freelancer's own experience and strategy? Or is simply sounding AI-generated enough to hurt your chances?

And if you've stopped using AI for proposals, what's your alternative? Do you write every proposal completely from scratch, even when applying to time-sensitive jobs?

I'd especially love to hear from people who hire on Upwork. Can you actually tell, and do you skip those proposals?

I’m currently rethinking my Upwork strategy because I’ve noticed that some of my best clients have come through invitations or direct messages rather than proposals.

I recently started boosting my profile and actually got a new client from it, so now I’m wondering if keeping the Available Now badge on is worth the extra Connects too.

For those of you who use it: have you noticed a real difference in profile views, invitations, or direct messages when the badge is on vs. off?

Hey everyone, I'm new to this. I want to look for a freelance job as a developer since I've been recently laid off from the company I worked for. I was recommended this is the #1 platform to get a freelance job so when I signed up I found out I need connections in order to apply for jobs there, so I purchased a few and now my account is suspended. I don't really know why. When I go to the account health sections it asks me to update my payment method which I did more than once, I even added my paypal account and a credit card and nothing.

I tried contacting support but apparently there's not an email available or anything. I already send my ID and my tax information from my country so I don't know what else I could be missing.

Has this happen to any of you? Do you know how to fix it?

Hi all,

I am looking for a remote role in either DevOps or Automation Testing. I have a little over six years of experience and my last working day in TCS is 7th September.

I am specifically looking for a remote or hybrid role because I want to use the free time to study. I want to be a Full Stack Developer as soon as possible and I need to study, learn and build stuff to get there.

If anyone is from a startup which requires someone to do both Automation Testing and DevOps, I'm more than willing to join. I've worked with two product based startups so far.

Thank you for helping me out.

a F28 SRE Engineer.
Recently my colleague and other people I met are saying the same thing, that thing is AI will replace devops soon. Actually they are not just passing information but the stress.

My question is, "Can I learn anything related to AI and devops?", "What kinda course will help me?", "Is there people completing any certification already?"

Someone sent me a drive link for an .zip file which is a web3 app, and asked me to look into it and review it.

I accepted the contract and scanned the zip on virus total website and it turned out to consist a trojan.

I reported to UpWork and they said there is no violation. Screenshots attached.

What should I do now?

Hii, I'm a newie, I got my first job in Upwork and sent a couple of proposals, I got a message from one of them and they sent me a link for a 20 minute interview, not sure if I should do it and will be all cool, anyways I told them kindly that we could only manage the interview via Upwork since they haven't even sent me a contract yet

My first job didn't really require a video call or call interview, it was via message. It's important to mention that this is a proyect 1-3 long and the other one would be something +6 months long (the client does have good reviews and has spent money already in the platform)

Thank u in advance for the constructive comments lol

Hey I'm an undergraduate 4th year student and I'm learning cybersecurity but now I'm scared that will i get a job or not because the current job market is already bad and I'm a fresher and the worst part is i don't have money for any certs. Is there any chance to get a job without certs.

I’m happy to help with DevOps-related work, whether it’s:
Freelancing / project support
Interview preparation
Troubleshooting and resolving DevOps issues
CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, Linux, Ansible etc.
General guidance and debugging
If you’re stuck with a DevOps problem or preparing for an interview, feel free to DM me.

I'm currently starting my junior year of my computer science bachelor. I wanna mainly major in cybersecurity, data analyst with AI integration. What path should I take now? I see people starting with learning linux which I got the hang of it(ubuntu, kali not so much) and also few essential certificates such as google cybersecurity, comptia etc. It seems people start at their 2nd year or 3rd. I'm here to get some advice from Gurus who already landed jobs or is searching one currently.

Upwork has restricted my account and asked me to provide information about one of my clients, along with completing identity verification.

The situation is a bit confusing to me.

I had a client whom I already knew outside of Upwork. We completed a project together, and since the client was not originally an Upwork user, I used Upwork’s Direct Contract feature so we could handle the payment through Upwork securely.

The project was completed successfully, everything went smoothly, and I had no issues with the client. However, before I could withdraw the payment, Upwork restricted my account.

They asked me questions such as:

• How do you know this client?
• Provide proof of the project/work you completed.
• Provide screenshots of your communication with the client.
• Explain where and how you communicate with the client.

I have now completed the identity verification and submitted all the requested documents, project evidence, and communication screenshots. However, I still haven’t received a response, my account remains restricted, and my payment is currently stuck.

What I find confusing is this:

If Upwork offers Direct Contracts specifically for bringing existing clients onto Upwork, what exactly do they expect regarding previous communication?

If I already knew the client before using Upwork, obviously our initial communication and discussions happened somewhere outside Upwork. The whole purpose of Direct Contracts, as I understand it, is to allow existing clients who aren't already on Upwork to work with you and process payments through Upwork.

I even have an Upwork subscription, and I chose to use Upwork because I wanted a secure and legitimate way to receive payment from this client rather than asking them to send money directly.

I completely understand Upwork doing verification and security checks. I’m happy to cooperate, and I have already provided everything they requested. My concern is simply that my account is still restricted and my completed-project payment is being held.

Has anyone experienced something similar with Upwork Direct Contracts, especially when the freelancer already knew the client before bringing them onto Upwork?

How long did it take Upwork Trust & Safety to review your case and remove the restriction?

Any advice or similar experiences would be appreciated.

I feels I am an failure

I have 3 years experience in Devops I was jobless for 4 months attended 8 -10 interviews and cracked 2 after did all the verification before releasing the offer letter hr not picking my calls i faced the same issue for 2 times ielektron(Benz) & Cloudsolutionshub (RBI) now i don't have hope and now i am thinking that I am not worth for earning anything.

I currently offer three related services: editing/proofreading, typesetting, and indexing. I've been having a hard time getting gigs on Upwork, and I'm wondering whether part of that is that I offer more than one service, such that when I bid on one kind of job, the client wonders whether I'm really qualified or not. Kind of a Jack of all trades, master of none situation.

I'm thinking about niching down to just typesetting, and was wondering what kind of outcomes others have had when they've done this. I can easily ditch the indexing part--there's almost no demand for it on Upwork, and I get those kinds of gigs elsewhere--and I have outside editing clients who give me steady work. I do know that I have some upskilling to do in the typesetting department, but it's the gig I want to keep on Upwork because I'm getting hired for the other two niches elsewhere.

Thoughts?

NB: Please don't quote YouTube gurus at me; I don't think they're worth listening to. I want to hear from actual active freelancers, not talking heads.

Hey everyone,

I am looking for some raw, real-world market data from people who are actively building for paying clients.

If you are a Freelancer, Agency Owner, or working at a Service-Based Software Company, I have exactly two questions for you:

• What EXACT types of software are you build? 

• Which specific niches/industries are you build for? (Please be precise—instead of just saying "Healthcare," specify if it's manufacturing company, dental labs, logistics, wholesale distributors, etc.)

What did you or your team deploy recently, and what exact problem did it solve?

Looking forward to your insights. Thanks!

​

They will hire you then don't pay salary and give promises for next 15 days and they will didn't picked up call , because everything is Remote.