Michael Christodoulides
At the end of last year I wrote about the trends we expected to shape the data center market in 2026 - power constraints, talent shortages and the growing complexity of hyperscale delivery. Earlier this year, our Empiric Insights interview with Sean Mulligan brought those themes to life through his fifty years of hands-on delivery experience.
Six months into 2026, the picture has sharpened. Construction pipelines have not slowed, the talent pool has not grown and some of the hiring behaviors we flagged as risks are now costing programs real time and real money.
I sat down with the Empiric US Data Centers team to take stock of the first half and identify where the pressure is sitting as we move into Q3. Three themes came through clearly: the cost of slow hiring decisions, the widening gap between commercial MEP experience and hyperscale delivery requirements and the workforce pressures building behind the boom.
Why Is Time to Hire Now the Biggest Bottleneck in Data Center Recruitment?
The constraint we are hearing about most often from clients is no longer availability of talent - it’s their speed of hiring.
The professionals on our talent bench are strong - and they know it. The strongest candidates across commissioning, project management and MEP delivery are fielding multiple offers simultaneously. Hiring managers are talking to candidates who have several offers already on the table and are taking longer than the market allows to decide, putting entire processes in jeopardy.
The delay often starts before a single interview takes place. A brief that is vague about scope, seniority and technical requirements slows the shortlisting process and, from a candidate’s perspective, signals uncertainty about the role itself. The programs moving fastest are the ones where hiring managers arrive at that first conversation with a specific picture of what they need and why.
Interview processes compound the delay. Extending to multiple rounds over weeks rather than days gives strong candidates the runway to accept competing offers. The organizations landing the right talent are running clear, focused processes that move with purpose and respect the candidate’s time.
Offer turnaround is where pace matters most. Taking one to two weeks to issue an offer is too long in this market and each additional cycle of internal approval after a candidate requests changes costs momentum that is hard to recover. Sean Mulligan put it directly in our Empiric Insights interview: "there’s a huge demand for talent out there" and the professionals who are willing to step up are not waiting around. Competitive salaries, bonuses and per diem packages are the entry point, not a differentiator. Programs where compensation lands below market rate are losing talent to organizations that moved faster and paid more.
The message coming through clearly going into Q3: if your process takes six weeks, your first-choice candidate will have accepted elsewhere by week three.
Why Doesn't Commercial MEP Experience Automatically Transfer into Data Centers?
MEP professionals are in high demand across every construction sector, but experience from commercial builds does not always transfer directly into hyperscale data center delivery. Commissioning requirements, operational pressure and the level of coordination on mission-critical sites create a very different working environment from most traditional commercial projects.
“The gap between commercial MEP and hyperscale data centers is usually a lot bigger than it looks on paper. Someone coming from office or retail builds might look strong on a resume, but once you get into mission-critical systems, commissioning and energization, it’s a completely different level of coordination and pressure,” says Rob Monan, Principal Consultant on our Data Centers desk.
Organizations handling the transition into hyperscale environments best are the ones accounting for that learning curve upfront. Candidates may have delivered complex mechanical and electrical work elsewhere, but mission-critical environments introduce different commissioning standards, redundancy requirements and operational expectations once systems move toward energization.
Sean Mulligan drew this line in our interview: "building your data center is construction as usual" up to a point, but "the big part is the receiving and setting and commissioning of OFCI equipment." That specialist layer is where commercial MEP experience starts to thin out.
The industries producing the most transferable MEP talent for data center projects are semiconductor, industrial and oil and gas. Professionals from those environments are already used to uptime expectations, redundancy standards and operational discipline, which usually shortens the transition into hyperscale delivery.
More organizations are now hiring MEP talent from adjacent sectors because the supply of professionals with direct hyperscale experience remains limited. The organizations seeing the best results are the ones investing properly in onboarding and giving people time to adapt to the pace and standards of mission-critical delivery. Candidates moving into data centers regularly describe the first few months as the steepest part of the learning curve.
Vendor procurement adds another layer of pressure. Working with the right vendors when procuring MEP equipment matters as much as the installation itself. Missed delivery dates can push entire project timelines backwards and leave MEP teams trying to recover lost time on site.
"The MEP talent gap in data centers is not going to close on its own. The market has grown every year for the past five years, and the demand for talent is still rising. Organizations need to invest in internships, apprenticeships and workshops now to bring young talent into the pipeline over the next five to ten years. If they do not, the workforce shortage we are managing today will be significantly worse by 2030," says Giacomo Gray, Principal Consultant on our Data Centers desk.
Hiring teams are now planning around a five-to-ten-year pipeline problem, not a short-term shortage. Organizations waiting for the market to correct itself are already feeling the impact on live programs.
What Does the Data Center Workforce Need That Nobody Is Talking About?
There is one dimension of data center delivery that rarely makes it into market reports or hiring strategy conversations: where these facilities are being built and what that means for the people building them.
The US data center market is expanding into increasingly remote locations. Land availability and power access are driving site selection into areas far from major metro centers, and the professionals working on these projects are spending extended periods in isolated areas, away from family, partners and support networks. The reality of living in temporary accommodation in a remote part of the country for months at a time takes a toll that the industry has been slow to acknowledge.
Mental health in construction is already stigmatized. In data center delivery, where schedules are relentless and the expectation is to push through regardless, the problem is acute. Sean Mulligan was direct about this in our interview: "this industry still has high rates of burnout. People are being told to work 12, 14 hour days, seven days a week... the substance abuse and suicide are still very real."
Organizations that are serious about retaining the talent they hire need mental health workshops, structured rotation schedules and genuine support systems on site - not just an EAP number on a poster in the break room. This is a retention issue as much as it is a duty of care issue, and for hiring managers struggling with attrition on remote programs, it should be part of the conversation.
What Should Hiring Managers Be Doing Differently for Q3 and Q4?
The construction pipelines we wrote about at the end of last year have translated into live programs that need people now. The talent pool has not expanded to match and the professionals who are available are making decisions faster than most hiring processes are designed to accommodate.
The organizations that will deliver on their Q3 and Q4 programme milestones are the ones making hiring decisions in days not weeks, writing specifications that reflect the actual scope of the role and partnering with recruiters who understand the difference between a commercial MEP coordinator and someone who has commissioned a mission-critical data center.
Our dedicated Data Centers team works across the full delivery lifecycle - from design and construction through to commissioning and operations. If you are building delivery teams for live programs, planning headcount for the second half of 2026 or exploring your next role in the data center sector, get in touch with us today.
Be sure to connect with Michael Christodoulides on LinkedIn to continue the conversation and follow us on LinkedIn and sign up to our newsletter to stay in the loop on what's next.
