Powered land is the new scarcity: what it means for leadership hiring

For a long time, data center development started with finding the right land. Increasingly, the more important question is: how much power can you actually get, and when?

A site can have strong fiber connectivity, suitable zoning and access to a major market. If the utility cannot provide the required capacity for several years, its development potential changes considerably. This is making power strategy a much more important capability within data center development teams.

For companies planning hundreds of megawatts or gigawatts of capacity, power procurement has become a strategic function. The people leading it need to understand several different routes to securing capacity:

• Utility interconnection processes and queue positions
• Transmission and grid constraints
• Power purchase agreements
• Renewable energy procurement
• Behind-the-meter generation
• Gas and other forms of onsite generation
• Battery storage
• Utility and regulatory relationships
• How all of this affects development schedules and project economics

The strongest people in these positions also understand the commercial implications.

Getting 300MW of power in 2029 instead of 2027 can completely change the value of a development opportunity. A Power Executive who can identify an alternative route to energisation can therefore influence billions of dollars of investment.

The talent pool extends well beyond data centers, which creates an interesting hiring challenge.

There is a limited pool of senior people who have spent their careers doing power strategy specifically for data centers. Meanwhile, almost every major developer is looking for some version of that experience. Some of the strongest candidates are consequently coming from industries that have been dealing with these problems for much longer.

Utilities have people who understand the grid, interconnection studies, transmission planning and how utilities actually make decisions. Renewable energy developers and IPPs have professionals who understand PPAs, project development, power markets, grid connections and negotiating with utilities. Power developers bring experience developing generation itself, which becomes particularly relevant as data center companies explore behind-the-meter and onsite power solutions.

These backgrounds can be extremely valuable when combined with an understanding of the speed and scale at which data center developers need to operate.

The role is also changing. A few years ago, power could sit within development, engineering or site selection. At the scale the industry is now targeting, I think more companies will treat it as a distinct leadership function.

The Power Executive may be involved before a site is acquired, assessing whether the power story is credible. They may help determine which markets the company enters, negotiate directly with utilities and power producers, evaluate alternative generation strategies and ultimately influence when billions of dollars of infrastructure can be delivered. That makes this person much closer to the investment and development strategy of the business.

Data center companies sometimes begin a search by asking for someone who has already held the same title at another data center developer. That can unnecessarily narrow the market.

The better question is whether the person has solved the underlying problems before.

Have they secured large blocks of power? Do they understand interconnection? Have they negotiated PPAs? Can they assess grid constraints? Do they understand generation economics? Can they build relationships with utilities? Can they evaluate behind-the-meter solutions?

Some of the best answers may come from outside the traditional data center talent pool.

As power becomes one of the biggest constraints on data center development, the companies that build strong internal power capability will have a meaningful advantage in deciding where they can build, how quickly they can energise and ultimately how much capacity they can deliver.

At Prosidon, we work with data center developers globally across power, development, engineering and construction hiring. If you are looking to build your power function or hire a senior power leader, please reach out.