Data centres are coming. Where will India find the people to run them?

India’s data centre boom is usually described in gigawatts and billions of dollars, but the less discussed question is who will build, power, cool, secure and operate the facilities behind it.

The country’s data centre capacity, which stood at around 1.5 GW in 2025, is expected to reach 6-6.5 GW by 2030, according to risk assessment and analytics company Rubix Data Sciences.

Earlier in September, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said India could attract at least $200 billion more in data centre investments, though he did not give a timeframe.


Also Read: India is world’s best location to set up data centres, $200 billion opportunity: Piyush Goyal

Delivering that capacity will require far more than software engineers. The workforce will include construction workers, electricians, HVAC technicians, mechanical engineers, power specialists, network professionals, cybersecurity experts and critical-facility operators.

In May, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said the expansion could create nearly one lakh engineering jobs across electrical and mechanical engineering, HVAC and cooling, critical facilities, power systems, networking, cybersecurity and commissioning.

The opportunity could be larger when the wider supply chain is included. Recruitment firm TeamLease Digital CEO Neeti Sharma estimates that the ecosystem could support more than four lakh jobs by 2030 across construction, operations and adjacent services.

The estimates cover different parts of the market, but both point to a jobs story that begins well before a data centre goes live.

The jobs arrive before the servers

Data centres are highly specialised technology facilities, but building one requires a large physical workforce.

“During the construction phase, a large data centre can create 1,000-1,200 direct blue-collar jobs,” Sunil Gupta, cofounder, CEO and MD of Yotta Data Services, told ET AI.

Around 90% of the workforce at this stage comprises electricians, HVAC technicians, mechanical workers, construction professionals, and security and facility-management personnel, he said.

The mix changes once the facility becomes operational. At Yotta, it typically shifts to around 60% white-collar and 40% blue-collar employees, according to Gupta.

That distinction is important because the data centre jobs story changes dramatically across the lifecycle of a facility. Construction creates jobs at scale, while operations require a smaller, more specialised workforce capable of maintaining the power, cooling, connectivity and uptime that data centres demand.

AI raises the technical bar

The rise of AI is changing the kind of facilities India needs and the skills required to run them. GPU-heavy systems consume considerably more power and generate more heat than conventional computing workloads, increasing the need for specialised electrical and cooling infrastructure.

AI is fundamentally changing the infrastructure equation, said Varun Maniar, Managing Director of Electromech Infraprojects, an MEP firm that builds data centres.

"Higher density workloads require much closer examination of the power distribution, substations, thermal loads and cooling architecture as well as operational resilience. The change is not simply about adopting a new cooling technology," Maniar told ET AI. "Electrical and mechanical systems must be designed and engineered around much higher power densities and thermal loads."

Demand is growing for electrical engineers, critical facility technicians, network and cloud specialists, commissioning engineers and energy-management professionals. Newer roles include liquid cooling technicians, GPU cluster operators, thermal optimisation engineers, digital-twin facility analysts, carbon-accounting specialists and battery-storage dispatch coordinators.

Vimal Dangri, CHRO and general counsel at IT company Mastek, told ET AI that the expansion is also creating roles in AI infrastructure management, data governance, cybersecurity, energy optimisation, advanced cooling and responsible AI operations.

Also Read: ET Graphics: Rise & rise of data centres in India

These include AI infrastructure planners, data centre sustainability specialists, AI governance and model risk professionals and specialists who optimise computing resources, he said.

Over the next three to five years, TeamLease's Sharma expects demand to rise for AI infrastructure architects, liquid cooling specialists, power-procurement experts, grid-resilience managers and GPU infrastructure engineers.

Cooling emerges as a pressure point

Cooling could become one of the sector’s biggest talent bottlenecks as AI pushes up power density inside data centres.

Hiring platform Instahyre’s cofounder Sarbojit Mallick told ET AI that demand is particularly strong for cooling and HVAC professionals, critical-facility engineers, electrical engineers, commissioning specialists, mechanical, electrical and plumbing professionals and building-management-system and controls experts.

The hardest skills to find include experience in high- and medium-voltage power, HVAC, liquid cooling, building-management systems, controls, commissioning and high-availability infrastructure, according to Mallick.

Teamlease’s Sharma said the most difficult hires are those that combine deep engineering expertise with experience in mission critical environments.

“High-voltage electrical work, liquid cooling systems and critical facilities management” are among the biggest gaps, she said, adding that experienced professionals in these areas are retiring faster than new talent is being trained.

“Over 70% of core monitoring and incident-response roles are hard to fill,” Sharma told ET AI.

The shortage is already translating into a pay premium. Instahyre estimates that data centre engineering roles pay 15-25% more than comparable jobs in conventional construction and industry. Engineers with seven to 12 years of experience in cooling and critical facilities can earn around Rs 15-30 lakh a year, while entry-level salaries can start at Rs 5-8 lakh.

TeamLease’s data points to a much wider range for senior positions. AI infrastructure architects are earning around Rs 1-1.3 crore annually, while greenfield site heads can make as much as Rs 1.8 crore, Sharma said. Heads of critical facilities and specialist cooling teams can earn from Rs 50 lakh to more than Rs 1 crore.

A parallel jobs market in power

Cooling is only one side of the equation. Data centres also require large amounts of reliable power.

India’s data centre electricity demand could reach 13.56 GW by 2031-32, according to the Ministry of Power. That will create demand beyond data centre operators for electrical engineers, grid-integration specialists, renewable-energy professionals, power-procurement teams and battery-storage experts.

Also Read: India could be a big winner in AI data centre boom, but power demand may be the catch

Jaspreet Bindra, cofounder and CEO of AI literacy firm AI & Beyond, said some emerging roles will sit at the intersection of data centres and the power ecosystem. These include renewable-power matching managers and battery-storage dispatch coordinators.

The employment multiplier therefore extends into power, renewables and utilities. There is a similar opportunity around fibre connectivity, water treatment, equipment servicing, construction materials, security, logistics and other local services.

The talent can come from outside IT

One of the interesting things about this jobs boom is that India does not have to build the entire talent pool from scratch as many of the underlying skills already exist in the power, telecom and manufacturing sectors.

“Power sector engineers bring grid and backup power expertise, telecom professionals bring network and fibre skills, and manufacturing engineers bring process discipline valuable for commissioning and QA,” Sharma said.

Moving into data centres, however, requires targeted training in facility-specific systems such as uninterruptible power supplies, building-management systems and cooling architecture and AI workload management.

Yotta is also looking to telecom, manufacturing and power companies to widen its talent pool, while upskilling electricians, HVAC technicians and mechanical workers.

The constraint is experience with mission-critical infrastructure. India has a large pool of electrical, mechanical and IT professionals, but fewer people who have worked with high-density power, liquid cooling, redundancy, commissioning and data centre-grade uptime requirements.

Apprenticeships, vendor certifications, polytechnic programmes and regional training centres will therefore be important if the supply of workers is to keep pace with the buildout.

The opportunity is spreading beyond the biggest hubs

The expansion is also taking data centre hiring beyond India’s traditional technology centres. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana and Karnataka are emerging as important markets, while operators are evaluating Tier-II cities for their cheaper land, power availability and connectivity.

Google’s planned $15-billion data centre and AI hub in Visakhapatnam is one example. In October 2025, Union Minister of State for Communications and Rural Development Pemmasani Chandrasekhar said the project could create 5,000-6,000 direct jobs and 20,000-30,000 jobs overall in Andhra Pradesh.

Teamlease’s Sharma said hiring is already spreading beyond the four major data-centre hubs, with Jaipur, Kochi, Mohali and Indore also gaining momentum.

This is encouraging firms to build regional teams instead of relying solely on the established pool in a few cities, Electromech's Maniar said. Local teams understand mission-critical standards better.

"The availability of talent cannot be taken for granted. New locations will require trained engineers, technicians and execution professionals that understand mission-critical standards, and will also need a supporting supply chain and training ecosystem," Maniar said.

Also Read: India’s data centre capacity hits new high as AI powers a 4x boom

But data centres will not become mass employers

There is a catch to the jobs story. Data centres are extremely capital-intensive and increasingly automated. Once a facility becomes operational, it does not need thousands of people working inside it.

“AI-enabled predictive maintenance helps, but it doesn’t eliminate physical manpower,” Yotta’s Gupta said, adding that skilled teams will continue to be needed on the ground around the clock.

In a report released earlier in September, Moody’s estimated that construction and operational employment in the sector could account for only around 0.01-0.02% of total industry employment.

The sector also depends heavily on imported servers, semiconductors, cooling systems and other equipment, which could limit the share of investment that flows through to the domestic economy.

The data-centre boom, therefore, could create a very different kind of technology jobs market, one where blue-collar skills, engineering expertise and AI infrastructure knowledge increasingly sit alongside software skills.