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In-demand tech job pays six-figure salary while offering very flexible hours - and you don't even need a degree
One of the most in-demand jobs in tech isn't a software engineer - the high-paying position that has convinced many young people to study computer science.
Instead, the role of data center technician is the hottest tech job, and getting hired doesn't even require a costly four-year degree, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Deborah Martinez Castellanos, 24, earns around $90,000 a year in the job, though others with more experience can make six figures.
She is one of many employees at data centers who are tasked with keeping America's internet up and running, and she's aware of the massive responsibility her shoulders.
'I don't want to say you have a sense of fear, but you do have a sense of, OK, you can't panic,' she told the WSJ.
An Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes on July 17, 2024 in Stone Ridge, Virginia
The biggest facilities span millions of square feet and can contain well over 100,000 servers stored in racks.
The servers allow the internet to host trillions of photos and emails on the cloud while also powering nascent AI chatbots.
Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google have invested billions of dollars over multiple years to build the facilities, the WSJ reported.
Now these companies and many others are desperately hiring people like Martinez Castellanos to maintain the giant webs of computer infrastructure they've constructed.
An analysis of job postings cited by the WSJ shows that the number of data center technician positions is up 17.8 percent since January 2020, while overall tech jobs are down by more than half.
Deborah Martinez Castellanos, 24, has been working full time at Aligned Data Centers since August 2021. She earns $43 per hour, which is about $90,000 a year
A data center is pictured in Ashburn, Virginia, a city a little over 30 miles northwest of Washington D.C.
Before starting at her current company, Martinez Castellanos attended a data center operations program at a community college that offers one-year certifications and two-year associates degrees.
She was then hired in 2021 for $29 per hour at a data center that leases space to companies all over the country.
Today, she works 12-hour shifts three days a week and every other Wednesday, a schedule that's common in the industry.
She called her extra-long weekends 'awesome,' using her days off to paint, play guitar or go hiking in Northern Virginia.
On the days she does work, she gets in at 6.p.m. and clocks out at 6 a.m. the next morning.
During that time, she watches screens that monitor the temperature and humidity of the areas storing thousands of servers.
She get alerts on her phone and computer if a server is at risk of overheating, then jumps into action to fix the issue.
Given the size of the facility, located in Ashburn, Virginia, she easily clocks 10,000 steps a night troubleshooting various glitches.
The biggest facilities span millions of square feet and can contain well over 100,000 servers stored in racks. Racks with servers are shown above
Damian Diaz, 37, was hired as a data technician for Google in South Carolina. He makes $112,000 a year, not including bonuses and equity
The area of Northern Virginia where Martinez Castellanos lives has been dubbed Data Center Alley because it hosts more than three dozen data centers, which power 70 percent of the world's internet traffic.
Data centers employ more than half a million people across the country, including custodial workers, security and other staff, as well as technicians, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis.
'The data-center industry is growing gangbusters,' Chris Kimm, a senior vice president at data center operator Equinix, told the WSJ.
Equinix will train workers who only have a high-school diploma, though Kimm said certifications and associate's degrees are helpful.
In South Carolina, 37-year-old Damian Diaz was hired as a data technician for Google.
Diaz told the WSJ his on-the-job training took a year, adding: 'It was like drinking out of a fire hose.'
He immigrated from Cuba nearly 20 years ago, and before Google worked various jobs, including one at an ice cream factory and another building fences.
Four years after joining Google, he makes $112,000 a year, not including bonuses and equity. He's using his earnings to help bring his parents from Cuba to the U.S.
Pictured: Iron Mountain Data Center in Prince William County, Virginia. This facility is part of the Data Center Alley, which is a collection of many data centers that process roughly 70 percent of the world's internet traffic
A picture taken on December 6, 2016 shows the new Google data center in the Netherlands
After dropping out of college in the 1990s, Nick Park he began working in the industry when it was still in its infancy.
Getting in on the ground floor paid dividends, and now the 45-year-old manages several data centers for Uber, earning him $175,000 a year plus bonuses and stock that double his base compensation.
'Data-center technicians are the unsung heroes,' said Park, who lives in Phoenix. 'We do our job well, so [servers] typically don't go down, but when they do, it's pretty catastrophic.'
'I've been on call since 1999,' he added.
The irony of artificial intelligence - which could threaten human jobs in a number of different disciplines - powering job growth in the data center sector is not lost on those in the industry.
Joe Minarik, CEO at DataBank, said AI is unlikely to replace the staff working at data centers.
'If a server goes down in a rack, I need a body to physically go see what went wrong. Did a breaker flip? Did a server catch on fire?' he said.
'We still need humans.'