The Next Data Center Bottleneck Isn’t Power or Cooling, It’s People

With the rapid rise of AI workloads, data centers are being built with higher power density, stricter reliability expectations, and cooling technologies that are evolving faster than most teams can adapt. As a result, these facilities aren’t just getting bigger—they’re becoming harder to operate, harder to staff, and far less forgiving when something goes wrong. Global electricity demand from data centers is projected to reach approximately 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, driven by sustained annual growth of around 15% through the end of the decade. Yet industry research shows workforce development is failing to keep pace, leaving operators short on experienced talent just as systems grow more complex. That gap—between rapid infrastructure expansion and the commissioning discipline and training required to support it—has become one of the industry’s most pressing risks.

So as direct liquid cooling moves from “future” to “field reality,” a practical question is showing up everywhere: do we have the commissioning rigor—and the trained technicians—to keep these sites safe, consistent, and online?

That’s the core theme in this episode of Straight Outta Crumpton, hosted by Greg Crumpton, featuring Jay Kallsen, Commissioning and Customer Manager at Impact Cx and co-founder of Method Xperts. Together, they unpack what commissioning really means, why the next wave of data center growth is fundamentally a people-and-process problem, and how standardized training could unlock faster, safer adoption of liquid cooling at scale.

What you’ll learn…

• Commissioning vs. “it turns on”: Jay explains commissioning as verifying that equipment and systems operate as designed—not merely at startup, but across real-world sequences, tolerances, and failover conditions that operations will depend on.

• Why “pathways” beat pep talks: Both emphasize that people aren’t afraid of hard work—they’re afraid of dead-end work. Creating visible pathways (training, mentoring, on-ramps) is how you attract and keep talent.

• Liquid cooling needs a common foundation: Jay argues that the industry lacks a shared baseline for what a “liquid cooling technician” even is. The opportunity is to build foundational knowledge first, then train the OEM-specific nuances—so field service can scale without silos.

Jay Kallsen is a mission-critical infrastructure professional with deep experience across data center operations, commissioning, and liquid cooling, beginning his career as a union electrician (IBEW Local 22) and advancing through hands-on roles at CBRE, Schneider Electric, and Google. At Google and later hyperscale and colocation operators, he led and supported mega-data center commissioning, cooling retrofits, direct liquid cooling pilots, and portfolio-level operational standardization, bridging construction, commissioning, and live operations. Today, as Commissioning and Customer Manager at Impact Cx and co-founder of Method Xperts, he focuses on workforce training, curriculum development, and liquid-cooling enablement, translating real-world operational knowledge into scalable industry solutions.

Article written by MarketScale.