One of the most in-demand jobs in technology is not that of software engineer, the well-paid position that has convinced many young people to study computer science.
In contrast, data center technician is the most attractive tech job, and you don’t even need an expensive four-year degree to get it. The Wall Street Journal reported.
Deborah Martinez Castellanos, 24, earns about $90,000 a year at the job, though others with more experience can make six figures.
She’s one of many data center workers tasked with keeping America’s internet running, and she’s aware of the enormous responsibility that falls on her shoulders.
“I don’t want to say you have a sense of fear, but you do have a sense that you can’t panic,” he told the WSJ.
An Amazon Web Services data center is shown located near single-family homes on July 17, 2024 in Stone Ridge, Virginia.
The largest facilities span millions of square feet and can contain more than 100,000 servers stored in racks.
Servers enable the Internet to host trillions of photos and emails in the cloud while powering nascent artificial intelligence chatbots.
Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google have invested billions of dollars over several years to build the facilities, The WSJ reported.
Now these companies and many others are desperately hiring people like Martínez Castellanos to maintain the gigantic networks of computing infrastructure they have built.
An analysis of job postings cited by the WSJ shows that the number of data center technician positions has increased by 17.8 percent since January 2020, while tech jobs overall have declined by more than half.
Deborah Martinez Castellanos, 24, has been working full-time at Aligned Data Centers since August 2021. She earns $43 an hour, which is equivalent to about $90,000 a year.
A data center is shown in Ashburn, Virginia, a town just over 30 miles northwest of Washington DC.
Before starting work at his current company, Martinez Castellanos attended a data center operations program at a community college that offers one-year certifications and two-year associate degrees.
She was then hired in 2021 for $29 an hour at a data center that rents space to companies across the country.
Currently, he works 12-hour shifts three days a week and every other Wednesday, a common schedule in the industry.
She called her extra-long weekends “amazing,” and used her days off to paint, play guitar or hike in Northern Virginia.
On the days he works, he comes in at 6 pm and leaves at 6 am the next day.
During that time, he watches screens that monitor the temperature and humidity of the areas where thousands of servers are stored.
Receive alerts on your phone and computer if a server is at risk of overheating, then take action to fix the problem.
Given the size of the facility, located in Ashburn, Virginia, it easily logs 10,000 steps a night troubleshooting various issues.
The largest facilities occupy millions of square feet and can contain more than 100,000 servers stored in racks. Racks with servers are shown above.
Damian Diaz, 37, was hired as a data technologist for Google in South Carolina. He earns $112,000 a year, not including bonuses or stock.
The area of Northern Virginia where Martinez Castellanos lives has been dubbed Data Center Alley because It houses more than three dozen data centerswhich They generate 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic.
Data centers employ more than half a million people nationwide, including custodial, security and other staff, as well as technicians, according to An analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“The data center industry is growing at a rapid pace,” Chris Kimm, senior vice president at data center operator Equinix, told the WSJ.
Equinix will train workers with only a high school diploma, although Kimm said certifications and associate degrees are helpful.
In South Carolina, Damian Diaz, 37, was hired as a data technician for Google.
Diaz told the WSJ that his on-the-job training took a year, adding: “It was like drinking from a fire hose.”
He emigrated from Cuba nearly 20 years ago, and before Google he worked a number of jobs, including one at an ice cream factory and another building fences.
Four years after joining Google, he earns $112,000 a year, not including bonuses or stock. He is using his earnings to help bring his parents from Cuba to the United States.
Pictured: Iron Mountain data center in Prince William County, Virginia. This facility is part of Data Center Alley, a collection of numerous data centers that process approximately 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic.
A photo taken on December 6, 2016 shows Google’s new data center in the Netherlands.
After dropping out of college in the 1990s, Nick Park began working in the industry when it was still in its infancy.
Getting in early paid off, and now the 45-year-old runs multiple data centers for Uber, earning him $175,000 a year, plus bonuses and stock that double his base pay.
“Data center technicians are the unsung heroes,” said Park, who lives in Phoenix. “We do our jobs well, so (servers) don’t usually go down, but when they do, it’s pretty catastrophic.”
“I have been on duty since 1999,” he added.
The irony that artificial intelligence (which could threaten human jobs across a range of disciplines) is driving job growth in the data centre sector is not lost on those working in the industry.
Joe Minarik, chief executive of DataBank, said AI is unlikely to replace staff working in data centers.
“If a server in a rack goes down, I need someone to physically go see what’s wrong. Did a circuit breaker trip? Did a server catch fire?” he said.
«We still need humans.»
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