Which Data Center Skills are in Demand Today

data center jobs salary

Today’s data center is an evolving engine supporting new types of workloads and users. There are new kinds of demands being placed around resource controls, facilities management, and data center optimization. Businesses are spending more money on their environments to better compete in an evolving world.

Cloud is a big part of that evolution. Global spending on Infrastructure-as-a-Service is expected to reach about $16.5 billion in 2015, an increase of 32.8 percent from 2014, with a compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019 forecast at 29.1 percent, according to Gartner.

As their approach to infrastructure changes, organizations are looking to invest in good people to support new initiatives. This means personnel needs to evolve with new demands of the market, which has created new positions, evolved others, and has forced the data center industry to invest in new talent.

Abut one third of respondents to our sister company AFCOM's latest State of the Data Center Survey, for example, said their personnel costs have increased because of new training and certification requirements. Yet, traditional data center infrastructure roles remain hard to fill.

It’s a competitive market, and it’s not always easy to find the right people. Respondents to the survey have had challenges filling the following top three roles:

1. Data center facility technicians, engineers, and operators: 42 percent
2. IT systems and/or applications personnel: 20 percent
3. Network and telecommunications personnel: 19 percent

Latest State of the Data Center Industry survey results show hunger for automation and cloud, DCIM, load balancing, and more