[gtirloni]

You probably want to join a freelancer network and market yourself as a "troubleshooter, performance analysis, root cause analysis expert" or something like that. Start building a name for improving things and getting out. Limit your hours to short projects only. These platforms have recruiters that can help you find clients that are looking for that kind of expertise.

Or start a blog and post about all these nasty bugs you're fixing in detail. Make a name for yourself as the person who figures out difficult bugs. Add a contact section listing the type of jobs you like and your hour/day price.

I don't have much experience with QA jobs but maybe that's also an option if you want to stay permanently employed. I'm sure a QA engineer that finds AND fixes bugs would be appreciated.

One difficulty with being self-employed for this particular kind of task is that the more you know the environment, the better insights you will have. That's already difficult if you've been at a company for many years... I can imagine facing a bug without a lot of context might make it difficult to troubleshoot initially.... but it's also an opportunity: these clients will want to keep you around to leverage that knowledge you built about their environment.

[Gnarl]

No. Forget "XYZ networks". Get yourself a good consulting-bureau (aka. a manager / contracting agency) and let them sell you into the right clients for your talents. They take a cut, yes, but it'll save you a ton of frustration, if self-selling isn't your strength.

[viraptor]

> a freelancer network

Do you mean the freelancer job boards like Upwork, or something else?