After upgrading from jira-steps-plugin 1.4.5 to 1.5.0, any previously working jqlsearch now runs into the following error: 

21:30:20  Error Code: -1
21:30:20  Error Message: null value 

After Upgrading, we had to re-enter JIRA username and API token for Authentication on the global Jenkins configuration page again. However, jirasearch still does not work. 

Accessing JIRA via REST API using the search end point works appropriately:

curl -u <user>:<token> "https://<company>.atlassian.net/rest/api/2/search?jql=project='<key>'" 

Downgrading to jira-steps-plugin version 1.4.5 resolved the problem.

We suspect a connection to https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-57182.