Atlassian certification is paramount for Jira administrator!
Is that really so?
In my experience, it is. Even in our team, where best configuration practice is documented and presented during newbie onboarding it helps a person to develop better understanding of ideas behind Jira.
As we're a consulting company, we sometimes see Jira instances that have logs full of errors, with customers suffering of slowed UI and, it the end, with business processes that doesn't help a team to achieve more.
Could that be avoided just because you've hired a certified admin? I'll be honest - not necessarily, building a bespoke business process automation requires a full team - a business analyst, a process owner, a certified admin, a project manager.
Sometimes you even won't need to hire an admin, you'd call Atlassian Partner such as Toolstrek to build the product for you, and then it could be supported by a less experienced admin.