International Data Center Day: The Careers Building Our Digital Future

Today is International Data Center Day, an effort to raise awareness of the data center industry and to inspire the next generation of talent. The initiative, launched by 7×24 Exchange International, is the latest in a series of efforts to address a looming talent gap for data centers and cloud computing infrastructure.

The goal is to help the industry connect with future generations, ensure a steady flow of skilled labor, and build public understanding of data centers and what
they do.

“By sharing how data centers make a difference in our daily lives and the career opportunities we are helping to ensure the future of the industry,” said Julianne Ierulli of Caterpillar Inc. and Vice President of 7×24 Exchange International .

The day’s themes include:

• Provide resources to educate people about what data centers are and how they work.
• Illustrate the importance of the data center industry on our daily lives.
• Share information on pursuing a career as a data center professional.
• Create more opportunities for mission critical firms to recruit future employees

Demand for staff in the global data center infrastructure sector is forecast to rise from about 2.0 million full-time employees today to nearly 2.3 million in 2025. There is high demand for all types of job roles and in different types and sizes of data centers, globally.

To highlight these opportunities, there are a wide range of observances of International Data Center Day by leading data center operators and professionals.

The primary resource is the International Data Center Day web site created by the 7×24 Exchange, the industry group that organized the initiative in 2019. Features include a “What Is A Data Center?”  introduction with videos, and educational resources designed for elementary, high school and college students.

A new resource for this year is the Data Center Career Pathfinder, an initiative led by The Uptime Institute and featuring career opportunities at Google, Microsoft and Meta (Facebook), and extensive resources for job seekers interested in digital infrastructure. It is a non-competitive site geared to drive awareness of data center-related job roles and help expand the future data center talent pipeline.

“The data center industry is one of the fastest growing markets on the planet and offers a wide variety of job roles, yet far too many people are unaware of the career opportunities within it,” said Rhonda Ascierto, vice president of research at Uptime Institute. “Regardless of your background, there’s very likely a career path in the data center industry that matches your individual goals, and our new resource can help you find it.”

Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Open Spectrum, brings our readers a series that provides an introductory guidebook to the ins and outs of the data center and colocation industry. The Data Center 101 Special Report series is directed to those new to the industry, or those of our readers who need to brush up on the basics. Perfect for #intldatacenterday.

On social media, many companies are sharing resources and information. We’ll be liking and sharing your social posts throughout the day on Twitter, and will also share some of them here: