Ask HN: Is data science a freelancer-compatible field?

Hi HN, I'm currently a (very mature) PhD student in CS and have about 20 years experience with Python web/database apps as well as a reasonable working knowledge of C/C++. I'm trying to diversify my work to include more that overlaps academia and scientists. I've done a very small bit before and really enjoyed it.

My question is whether the world of data science, R, data pipelines, data analysis in Python, etc is something that makes sense for someone looking for well paid part time or short contract work. We all know that some subsets of software are basically all full-time jobs, but I don't know much about that area. thanks