The booming data center market has positioned itself as a attractive career option for skilled IT and business workers, and the industry shows few signs of slowing down – analysts expect global data center spending will reach $200 billion by 2028, and that will mean more personnel to design, deploy, manage and secure new data centers.

Whether you’re already involved in the digital infrastructure technology industry or looking for a fast-growing market to enter, here are five data center careers worth looking into this year.

1. Data center infrastructure engineer

Data center infrastructure engineers earn an average national salary of $147,000 for their work in designing and deploying data center infrastructure. Companies such Crowdstrike and DigitalOcean are in the market for data center infrastructure engineers to perform the following tasks:

  • Deploy and maintain new data center infrastructure
  • Rack, stack and wire servers, power distribution units and switches
  • Diagnose and repair hardware and perform updates, rebuilds and integrations
2. Enterprise data center network architect

Often falling under a variety of titles, data center architects are in demand at organizations like Potawatami Federal Solutions, Presidio and Nvidia. With an average salary of $188,000, data center architects are responsible for the following:

  • Reviewing, analyzing and designing customer data architecture
  • Defining and implementing data management, security and privacy strategies, and governance policies and principles
  • Developing a roadmap of new technologies and protocols and drive their design and adoption
3. Data center IT operations manager

As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) remain high business priorities in 2024, companies like Microsoft, Amazon Data Services and Google are hiring data center IT operations managers in Q1 2024.

With an average national salary of $129,000, these professionals work to accomplish the following goals:

  • Manage the performance of a diverse team of data center operation professionals with varying skills across different locations
  • Ensure effective and productive management of daily data center operations including queue management, 24/7 shift arrangement and hardware logistics
  • Recommend, document and manage policies and procedures to meet industry best practices and to meet service level agreements (SLAs)
4. Database administrator

With broader and database-specific administrator roles available, Vantage Data Centers, DarkStar Intelligence and Hexaware Technologies are all vying for the best talent.

Database administrators earn an average of $77,000/year and help their organization perform these functions:

  • Install, patch, upgrade and manage database servers like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Server
  • Use server telemetry software to manage a collection of servers and provide status on the data environment
  • Write, update and maintain documentation on the database environment
  • Participate in on-call rotations for emergency server issues
5. Data center technician

Data center technicians make an average of $91,000 a year, with Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Tesla all looking to hire data center technicians at the time of publication.

While each position will vary based on a company's specific needs, data center technicians are generally expected to accomplish these tasks:

  • Deploy and maintain data center server and network infrastructure
  • Implement and enforce security protocols to protect data center assets and prevent unauthorized access
  • Troubleshoot data center operations within hardware, networking and software