How to Find Remote Jobs

Is remote work right for you? We reveal the best remote job boards and share insider tips for how to find remote jobs.

How To Find Remote Jobs: The Insider’s Guide to Your Next Remote Job Search

By Vicki Lind, M.S., updated by Jelena Grove and edited by Dan Hahn, M.S.

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Do you want to work from your back porch, favorite coffee shop, a coworking space, or a picturesque landscape somewhere in the Mediterranean?

Back in the day, the only way to make remote work (aka “telework” or “telecommuting”) a possibility was to risk your livelihood, stake your savings, and go out on your own. You had to forgo all the perks of traditional employment: health insurance, a retirement fund, paid time off, long-term job security, work-life balance, and general peace of mind.

But these days, over a year since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s looking like “traditional employment” is going digital –– for good. According to Global Workplace Analytics, an estimated 75 million U.S. employees could work remotely at least part of the time. That means a whopping 56% of the American workforce could have remote positions compatible with the storied #WFHlife. If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance that includes you, too.

As more and more companies make the move to go the distance, remote job boards are exploding with opportunities. We know the search is daunting, so we scoured the internet and hand-picked the best leads the internet has to offer your remote job hunt.

If you want a full-time, freelance, or flexible remote job, and aren’t sure where to start looking –– you’re in the right place.

Home → Helpful Articles → Job Search → How To Find Remote Jobs: The Insider’s Guide to Your Next Remote Job Search

We’ve got a ton of articles about how to navigate your job search. Here are a few you might find helpful:

If you’re feeling stuck, reach out, and we’ll customize a job search to match where you’re at in the process.

How To Tell If Remote Work Is Right For You
- Pros of working remotely
- Cons of working remotely
- Types of remote work available
The Best Online Job Boards To Find Remote Work
- General remote job boards
- Freelancer marketplaces
- Tech-only job boards
- Niche job boards
Networking Platforms for Remote Job Seekers
- LinkedIn
- Reddit
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Discord
- Clubhouse
Using Google Advanced Search for Your Remote Job Hunt
Remote Bootcamps For Skills Building and Rapid Remote Job Placement
Final Thoughts

How To Tell If Remote Work Is Right For You

There’s a lot more to working remotely than being in your pajamas all day. Sure, the highly Instagrammable #WFHlife seems like a no-brainer for the aspiring former office workers. But there are some very real factors you need to take into account before you decide to take the plunge — whether that means commuting to the dining room table, a coworking space, or an Airbnb in San Francisco.

But no matter where you find yourself working, you’re going to need to cultivate self-motivation, organization, and communication skills to be successful. Even more important, vigilance about mental health and self-care. These apply to any telework situation, whether working for yourself independently or as part of a larger organization with a distributed workforce.

Pros of working remotely

Flexibility to plan your work tasks around your personal life, not the other way around
Work anywhere in the world that has access to electricity and the internet
No more wasted time and resources commuting
More productivity and job satisfaction
Customize your workspace and environment however you want to
“Business casual” can now include your pajamas

Cons of working remotely

Unless you’re working as a full-time W-2 employee for a distributed organization, you will have a hard time getting medical benefits, a 401k, or other perks
It can be really difficult to balance life with work
You will spend a lot more time on screens and zoom
Distractions can cause you to be unproductive
It can be isolating unless you have a social network to lean on
It can be expensive to set up your home office space or workstation
Even more video calls!

Types of remote work available

Not all remote work is the same. There are three main categories:

Freelancing (for one or more clients, with 1099)
Contract work (for one or more clients, with 1099)
Full or part-time (at one company with a distributed workforce and W-2)

Keep in mind that some jobs you come across in your search will be only partially remote, which would limit your work options to companies in your region. In that case, living in Bali would have to wait… but you could still take a working vacation there.

Sample remote job titles and salaries

You don’t need to be a coder to live the #WFHlife; there are plenty of non-tech positions available in the remote-ok-realm:

Copywriter	$37 – 90k / year
Virtual Nurse	$41 – 100k / year
Journalist	$29 – 65k / year
Social Media Manager	$35 – 71k / year
Sales Representative	$45 – 100k+ /year
UX Web Designer	$40 – 90k / year

Companies with remote-friendly distributed workforces

If you’re looking for location independence but still crave the stability of a larger organization, (or things like human resources, other team members, and set-in-stone remote work policies), you may want to seek out companies with distributed workforces.

Here are a few we like:

HubSpot does inbound marketing and salesforce software, and has been a hybrid remote-office employer for some time now.

Twitter announced in May of 2020 that it was going to extend its work from home policy indefinitely, allowing its employees to be free of the office basically forever (even from subsidiary companies like Square).

10up provides web design and development consulting services. They describe their 120 plus person team as “one big happy family”—a family that’s distributed worldwide and stays connected via Slack, Google Hangout, and plain ol’ texting.

Automattic is the remote team that is the genius behind WordPress, Longreads, Simplenote, Gravatar, and Polldaddy, and other tools many rely on day-in and day-out for their business needs. “Automatticians” work from anywhere they want; their current team of nearly 500 employees are dispersed across 50 countries.
Fire Engine RED provides marketing, technology, and data solutions to the education market with over 80 employees across North America.
GitHub is the world’s largest developer platform, with over 65 million users. It allows developers to share and collaborate on code from anywhere in the world.
Slack is a direct messaging service that allows teams and individuals to organize their communication and stay connected across places and time zones.

The Best Online Job Boards To Find Remote Work

Online job boards should be the first place you look as you begin your remote job hunt. In our research, we discovered that a lot of them operate by subscription, with access to exclusive job listings, features, and resources for free. If you’re serious about finding remote employment, take your time to explore the job boards below before you sign up for your favorites (it’ll also help prevent total inbox overload).

Here are a few of our go-to job boards we recommend to our career discovery clients:

Note: If you start feeling overwhelmed with your remote job search, connect with us for a chat. We can set up a custom remote job search for you, and once you find a position you are interested in and you can qualify for, we’ll help you tailor your resume and cover letter to it!

General remote job boards

This general list of remote job boards feature full and part-time opportunities from a broad mix of industries like tech, marketing, design, healthcare, legal, and more:

Indeed.com is our job board of choice. It’s free, simple to use, and has excellent keyword filters to help you find precisely the job listings you’re looking for.

To start searching, you have to make an account that you can easily sync up with your email provider. Under “what” type in your desired job title. Under the “where” field, instead of typing in your city and state, simply type in “remote.”

For more information on using Indeed.com, see our Best Job Boards article.

FlexJobs.com lists remote, freelance, and flexible employment opportunities from all over the US and the world. The FlexJobs team actually reviews and researches each posting to make sure they’re legitimate, and they make sure to include opportunities at all levels: from entry-level to executive. There is a small fee for a one-month trial, but it’s worth it to circumvent hours of chasing false ads. You can look at the list and previews of remote job postings for free, but you can’t see the full details until you register and pay the fee.

Skip the Drive a fully remote job board with a strong international presence, Skip the Drive offers more accessible pricing for employers looking to post jobs than similar job boards. It also includes a helpful feature to easily browse companies hiring remotely.

Jobspresso.co is constantly updated and expertly curated to include only legitimate, open, and recent job posts in a wide range of fields: marketing, customer service, tech, sales, writing/editing, project management, and more. As a bonus, the website’s user experience is superb: with effortless navigation, intuitive filters, and search fields that are easy to find and use.

VirtualVocations.com offers over 10,000 remote jobs across an enormous variety of industries: business services, tech, travel, education, and accounting positions, administrative support, and non-profit jobs. This easy-to-use job board is one of our favorites because of its robust filters — you can find jobs at any career level (from internships to executive-level), in every job category (from administration to coding), with fully or partially remote options.

Remote.co pulls from the most highly recruited job categories available and curates a selection of remote jobs regularly. Intuitively organized by job category, this platform makes it easy to search for trending opportunities in data entry, healthcare, accounting, marketing, and more. They also have a robust collection of educational videos to help prepare you for a remote career.

We Work Remotely is a premium job board that claims to have over 3 million visitors, as well as an impressive stable of enterprise clientele that includes companies like Google, Amazon, GitHub, Basecamp, and more. They focus on marketing tech jobs, but include a wide array of opportunities within creative fields of all types.

JustRemote links you with remote companies based on your preference of fully or partially remote work. Their website lets you browse companies and job openings in web development marketing, design, and business/executive fields. They also have free and paid features like resume builder templates and PowerSearch, where JustRemote hunts down those elusive, unadvertised remote job openings and sends them to your inbox.

Pangian – Companies like Lyft, Fender, Apple, and Visa use Pangian (yes, named after Pangea) to source top-notch global talent across all levels of career and education. They also have a bustling online community of global citizens, with helpful forums and discussions about remote life, advice, and more.

WorkingNomads is a no-frills, brass tacks kind of job bulletin for the digital nomads among us. It lets you filter jobs by industry (including fields like finance, legal, marketing, and all the usual suspects), and get set up with alerts to make sure you don’t miss an opening.

Can’t forget about Craigslist. While it may not be the first place you want to look for verified, reliable opportunities, there’s no disputing that this platform has hidden gems you just can’t find anywhere else –– both for those seeking distributed workforce and independent work.

To use Craigslist in your remote job hunt, you need to do three things:

Search for specific keywords (like “remote” + “[desired job title]”)
Repeat your search in different cities
Stay on the alert for scammers

Finally, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the tax laws of the places you’re interested in, to protect yourself from any accidental tax missteps.

Need help making your next career move?

Freelancer marketplaces

These are the best sites for freelance jobs and contract-based workers across virtually every industry and job type there is:

Upwork is one of the most popular marketplaces of today’s knowledge economy. It’s basically a contract work platform that allows you to bid on projects, incubate your freelance business, and sell your own projects to new clients. It even provides payment protection to shield you from scammers.

But, like most online marketplaces, Upwork has its issues. For one thing, it can be difficult to get clients at first. You may need to send 20 or 30 proposals before you get your first gig. There are lots of unfair pricing issues, displayed income on your profile, and generally shady people on the platform. They also take a cut of your earnings.

Freelancer has been around since 2009 and claims to be the largest freelancer platform out there, featuring thousands of flexible jobs and work opportunities in technical, professional and creative fields. You can search for jobs based on your skill set, to hone in on the best matches for you.

Fiverr and FiverrPro is the marketplace of choice for anyone working in the gig economy. Here you have an enormous diversity of projects, ranging from tiny, $5 one-offs (like transcribing an audio recording) to larger, recurring creative projects (like designing a website or a site plan for an ADU).

If you’re looking for higher-paying gigs and higher-powered clients, try browsing FiverrPro –– who focus on elite, well-paying jobs for verified experts in their field.

Toptal markets itself as a elite freelance marketplace, claiming to provide the top 3% of freelancers in the world. Their talent pool is focused on fields like software development, finance, design, product management, and project management.

Tech-only job boards

The websites below list exclusively tech-related jobs, so you can stop wasting time sifting through postings that don’t apply to your field of work:

Stack Overflow is an enormous platform for software developers with a massive job board and coding community to boot. This is where major companies and enterprise-level organizations go to hire for jobs like full-stack developers and software engineers.

Gun.io is where “exceptional software developers go to find exceptional gigs.” It’s a technical talent source for a global stable of software clients, from small startups to Fortune500 companies. With an easy-to-navigate platform, this website makes it easy to search for remote work opportunities for mid and senior-level developers.

PowerToFly is a company that connects underrepresented groups to high-powered technical jobs in software engineering, data science, marketing, and more. On their homepage, you just need to type “remote” into the search bar instead of a location to view all the remote opportunities available. No account necessary!

Remotive’s interface is simple from the start, with featured and recent job posts front and center on the home page. Just one click to start reviewing job announcements. Tech companies are vetted to post on the site, and you can quickly toggle a few buttons to zero in on the location and type of job you’re looking for.

Niche job boards

No matter what industry you’re shooting for, there’s probably a job board with the perfect opportunity for you. Here are a few notable standouts:

Wellfound (formerly AngelList) is a startup-centered remote job board that boasts over 25,000 company connections. When you create a free account, you get access to thousands of exciting, fast-paced, growth-focused startups you’ve always wanted to work for.

Dribble is a graphic design board that makes it easy to find the type of job that’s right for you. With a cleverly designed layout, you can separately browse the full-time, W-2 jobs as well as the freelance opportunities available. Dribble is also great for folks outside the art world and posts new jobs daily for positions like product manager, web developer, and more.

The Writer Finder has compiled a strong list of job boards for writers to find remote work.

Networking platforms for remote job seekers

If you’re serious about finding your remote dream job, remember to take a break from scouring job sites and job boards and spend some time networking. Thousands of people come across career-changing job opportunities on social media every day, and by ignoring these outlets, you may be leaving money on the table.

Here are our favorite social networking platforms for remote workers and job seekers:

Of course, LinkedIn reigns supreme when it comes to online networking. Beyond its value in connecting you with career-changing leads, LinkedIn is particularly helpful for conducting job and employer research as you compare companies and job titles. You can use it to connect with recruiters and hiring managers, former (or future) co-workers, and even to submit job applications.

No matter what you’re looking for, Reddit will help you find it. With a dedicated community for virtually any topic you can think of, you’re certain to find a subreddit (Reddit lingo for category-based feeds) sharing information and resources about it. As an added bonus, oftentimes Reddit communities will have moderators or other individuals who can give you exclusive access to external career communities, like career groups in Discord, Slack, or Clubhouse.

Twitter

There are lots of ways Twitter can help you find, and even land, your dream remote job. Oftentimes, Twitter is the first place companies go to advertise job openings, and there are tons of features you can use to help you organize your job search and keep track of companies of interest in real-time.

Facebook

Facebook is where you can leverage the networks of your friends, family, old colleagues and acquaintances to point you towards new opportunities in the remote realm. You can also view the Facebook “jobs” portal and type in “remote” and your desired job title in the search bar to reveal company postings.

Discord

Discord is a server-based messaging app used by individuals, organizations, and groups of people to share information, resources, and advice. You can audio chat, video chat, and share files. Not only is it great for networking with people in your industry, but oftentimes Discord servers will include dedicated channels for job postings and job-related advice.

The only downside is that you need to get “invited” to these servers to participate, which means you need to obtain an invite link. The secret to finding them? People post them publicly all the time in Reddit discussions. Copy/paste when you find one you’re interested in and you’re good to go.

Clubhouse

Clubhouse is a brand-new, very trendy, and already spectacularly popular phone app made for drop-in voice chatting. You can pop in and out of discussion rooms that span just about any topic you can think of, with listeners and participants from all over the world. Look at every room on Clubhouse as an opportunity to make that career-changing connection with potential employers, clients, and collaborators.

The only downside is you can only join with an invitation link from an existing user. The app is still in beta testing mode, so it won’t be that way for long.

Using Google Advanced Search For Your Remote Job Hunt

If you want more control and more options in one place, you may want to start your remote job hunt on Google Jobs. It pulls job postings from all over the internet and displays them all in one place, making it your best option if you want to cast a wide net.

But you still need to be precise in your word choice for Google to turn up results you’d actually be interested in. Google Advanced Search lets you hone in on the most important aspects of your query, from the phrasing and the language of your search down to the language and region of your choice.

Suppose you’re looking for a remote copywriting job, but you want to avoid the realm of finance. You could:

Search for exact phrasing matches by putting your search terms in quotes (“hiring remote copywriter”)
Exclude terms you don’t want by putting a (-) sign in front of a term (“remote copywriting” -finance)
Combine keywords to cast a wide net by using OR in your search (remote copywriting OR content writing)

Learn more about advanced Google search techniques here.

Remote Bootcamps For Skills Building and Rapid Remote Job Placement

Know remote work is for you, but don’t have the skills yet? Jumpstart your #WFHlifegoals with an online boot camp –– and get your mobile lifestyle started early.

Bootcamps are rapid-paced workforce accelerators that can take students from zero to paid employees in a new field in a matter of months. Like your future job, most of these programs are fully online and can be done from anywhere. While boot camps tend to cater to the tech sector, programs exist in every field you can think of: marketing, design, sales, product and project management, creative disciplines, cybersecurity, data analytics, and more.

Bootcamps range in price and time commitment, so make sure you research them diligently before you decide which one is worth it for the level of upskilling you need. Start by browsing Trilogy education, which partners with local universities all over the U.S., or HackReactor, which lets you defer payment until you get a job.

Final Thoughts on Your Remote Job Search Process

While we’re certain we’ve covered a substantial portion of the remote job market in this post, there are thousands of opportunities out there that aren’t advertised anywhere.

As COVID-19 restrictions ease and the world comes out of isolation, remember that word-of-mouth and in-person networking will once again become an all-important piece of your job search strategy. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, reach out for pointers and advice from your connections, and be fearless in the pursuit of your flexible workday.

Key takeaways

Get real with yourself before determining whether working remotely is right for your lifestyle
More and more companies are hiring remote employees and implementing distributed workforces, making it possible to have flexible work without compromising on the perks of the traditional office
Search for jobs on dedicated job boards in your industry to find the most relevant remote work arrangements for your situation
Network with people in your industry to increase your chances of finding better work from home jobs
Upskill and find a job at the same time by enrolling in a boot camp in your preferred industry or field