India is building data centres at a pace few markets have seen. Cloud demand, data rules that keep data in the country, and the rise of AI computing have brought large investment into Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru and Delhi NCR.
Every one of these sites needs people who can design and deliver it: heads of design, MEP leaders (mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire), project and construction heads, commissioning managers. We hire these roles across India.
Most of the right people moved recently
The data centre operators have been hiring their project and engineering heads quickly, often in the last two or three years. Many of the strongest people we meet have been in their present job for under three years.
That matters for a brief that asks for long tenure at the current employer. In this market, a recent move is usually a sign of demand, not of instability. We read the reason for each move before judging it.
Many come from outside data centres
The industry is young in India, so its leaders came from somewhere else. Large construction and engineering firms, airport and infrastructure builders, real estate developers, hospital and pharma plant builders, and the MEP contractors themselves have all supplied people.
A search limited to people with "data centre" in their current title will see only part of the market. The skills that carry over are clear: delivering large, mission-critical buildings with heavy electrical and cooling loads, to fixed deadlines, with strict testing.
Design and delivery are different skills
Some leaders are designers: they set the electrical architecture, the cooling approach, the redundancy levels. Others are builders: they run sites, contractors and schedules. A few have done both. Knowing which one a role needs saves a lot of time.
Domestic experience dominates
Most data centre work in India is for Indian sites, often for an Indian owner. Leaders with experience across several countries are rare. If a role truly needs international experience, the pool becomes very small, and it is worth deciding early whether that is a must-have.
The selling side is growing too
As operators and service firms compete, they also need sellers who understand data centres: colocation, managed services, system integration, power and cooling. Some of the best of these sellers came up through data centre and cloud firms rather than traditional IT sales.
What works
- Treat recent moves as normal in this market.
- Look at infrastructure, construction and MEP firms, not only operators.
- Separate design roles from delivery roles.
- Decide early whether international experience is truly needed.
