Most employers treat a data centre project as a construction problem until the day the building is finished. Then they discover they have no one to run it. The people you need change at every stage, and the lead times on those people are not the same as the lead times on concrete and switchgear.
This applies whether you are a utility-scale developer, a mid-sized company building a private facility, or an operator expanding an existing site in Ontario, Alberta, Texas or Virginia. The roles differ by stage. Here is how we would plan for them.
Stage 1: Planning and design
Early decisions fix most of the long-term cost. Power supply, cooling approach and site selection all get settled here, and the people in the room should include someone who will have to operate the result.
Hires to think about:
- Project managers with multi-site program experience, not only single-building experience
- Electrical and mechanical design leads who understand high-density loads
- A finance lead or controller who can model capital spend against phased capacity
- An operations representative, even if part-time or on contract, who reviews designs for maintainability
That last seat is the one most often left empty. Designs that look fine on paper can be awkward to service, and fixing that after construction costs far more than a few consulting days up front.
Stage 2: Construction
This stage is coordination work. Several trades, several contractors and a schedule that moves when any one of them slips.
The pressure points are skilled trades and site leadership:
- Electricians, including high-voltage and controls specialists
- Mechanical and pipefitting trades for cooling systems
- Site superintendents and safety coordinators who hold multiple contractors to one standard
- Schedulers and cost controllers who track scope changes as they happen
Trades availability is tight in both countries. Where a project competes with other large builds in the same region, contract and project-based hiring often fills the peak better than permanent headcount you will not need in 12 months. Decide early which roles are temporary and say so to candidates. It saves a lot of friction.
Stage 3: Commissioning and cutover
This is the stage that gets underfunded. Systems have to be tested, documented and handed over, and the people doing it need to understand both the equipment and the paperwork.
Look for:
- Commissioning engineers and technicians
- Network and systems engineers who can integrate racks, power and monitoring
- Technical writers or documentation coordinators, since handover records decide how easily the site runs for years
A common mistake is releasing the build team before the operations team has taken ownership. Overlap them. A few weeks of shared time transfers knowledge that no document fully captures.
Stage 4: Operations
Once the facility is live, the hiring need becomes steady and permanent, and the cost of turnover goes up. Downtime is expensive, and a new hire on a critical shift needs real ramp-up time.
Core roles:
- Facilities and critical-environment technicians, often on rotating shifts
- Maintenance planners who build preventive schedules around asset life
- Data analysts or AI and data specialists who turn monitoring data into maintenance and capacity decisions
- A site manager with authority across facilities, IT and vendors
Shift work is the retention risk. Pay, schedule predictability and a visible path to a lead role matter more than most employers expect. If your technicians are leaving for the next site opening nearby, look at those three things before you look at anything else.
Build the hiring plan like the project plan
A simple way to do this is to put each role on the same timeline as the schedule, then work backward by the time it realistically takes to find someone.
| Stage | Typical hiring mode | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Planning | Senior permanent or contract | Missing operations input |
| Construction | Contract and trades | Peak-demand shortages |
| Commissioning | Contract, then convert | Early release of build team |
| Operations | Permanent | Shift turnover |
The point of the table is not precision. It is to force the question of who you need six months before you need them.
Power and location change the labour question
Access to reliable power increasingly decides where facilities get built. That means projects land in places where the local pool of electrical and mechanical talent may be thin. Budget for relocation, rotational work or a longer search, and check local wage levels in Job Bank or BLS data rather than assuming your usual range will hold.
We have seen the same pattern in other build-heavy sectors. A food manufacturer in the GTA we worked with made over 20 hires in 18 months across production, skilled trades and office roles. The lesson carried over: the plan worked because the hiring was sequenced against the operation, not bunched at the end.
What to do next
List every role your project will need from planning to steady-state operations, mark which are contract and which are permanent, and note the date each one must be in seat. Anything you cannot fill in the time available is where to start looking now. A Traverse recruiter can help you build that plan and fill the operations, trades, finance and data roles on it.