More and more people prefer the independent life style of freelancing and increased mobility. At the same, IT workers and machine learning and data experts in particular are in great demand, giving them the luxury of choice. In this talk I'll discuss my 10+ years of industry experience, working first as an independent data mining consultant and later leading a team of such work-for-hire data science experts. I'll share some practical tips for those interested in walking the same path, or for companies wanting to contract such teams.