Tech school grads among those who’ll benefit from data centers
Technical college graduates and small business owners will be big winners in the massive Vantage Data Centers development soon expected to become the largest employer in Port Washington.
The four-building campus, named “Lighthouse,” is part of OpenAI’s and Oracle’s Stargate Project, a plan to invest $500 billion in building new artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States over the next four years. Construction on the Lighthouse project is slated to begin before the end of the year and expected to be complete by 2028.
In an announcement last week, data center operator Vantage said it and Oracle will provide “more than 1,000 long-term jobs and thousands more indirect jobs” once the Lighthouse campus is complete. At least 300 of those are expected to come from Vantage, Port Washington officials said, while the remaining 700 or so would come from Oracle and OpenAI. In a February letter to residents, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke wrote that many of the Vantage jobs “pay six figures, and many do not require a four-year degree.”
“We’re looking at jobs that are going to raise the standard of living for families here,” president and CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce Dale Kooyenga said. “These jobs are clearly … going to be paid well above the median family income. I’d say about 150% more, at least.”
Technical college graduates will “be a big winner in this,” Kooyenga said, as HVAC professionals, electricians and certain engineering roles will be in high demand. “A lot of these jobs pay college-graduate levels but only require a technical degree,” he said.
A Vantage webpage for the Lighthouse campus says the campus will employ workers in full-time, professional roles such as critical facilities engineers and technicians, security and operations specialists, and administrative and management positions. Vantage says the average salary will be more than $116,000 annually.
“The salaries, from my understanding, are $80,000 to mid-six-figures … depending on your position,” said Neitzke.
Currently, Vantage has about 20 open positions located in Port Washington listed on its careers page, though some roles can be based in either Port Washington or one of the company’s other U.S. or Canada locations. Most current listings are in engineering or for management- or director-level positions. These include roles in project engineering, construction management and project management. Other listings include an employee relations manager, an environmental health and safety manager, a construction scheduler and an executive assistant.
Kooyenga said additional jobs “across the educational spectrum” will be listed over the next two years. Most will require at least a two-year technical degree, he said, though some positions — he mentioned security guards and custodians — will not require post-secondary education.
“They have everything there, from security to maintenance … to engineers and programmers,” said Neitzke. “It’s an exciting base of new opportunities, as far as I see it.”
“My understanding is, because I went and visited the new Vantage Data Centers in Virginia, that the majority of employees who work for Vantage are going to be a highly skilled and technical workforce,” Neitzke said.
He said some positions will be available to technical college grads but there also will be positions for people with “advanced training, all the way to master’s degrees and everywhere in between.”
Kooyenga said that Vantage is putting millions toward workforce development with “various local partners,” soon to be announced. On its Lighthouse campus page, Vantage describes “partnerships with local educational institutions and workforce development organizations … that prepare workers for high-growth careers in data center operations and emerging technologies.”
Vantage has already approached schools and colleges in the region, spanning from the Green Bay area through Sheboygan to the Milwaukee area, according to Neitzke.
“Vantage is meeting with the local public schools, the high schools. They are meeting with the technical colleges and the universities in the region,” he said.
He highlighted technical colleges, saying, “Port Washington is sweetly positioned between three technical college networks: Milwaukee Area Technical College, Moraine Park Technical College, and Lakeshore College. … We are surrounded by really cool opportunities.”
Fifty minutes south of Port Washington, Microsoft’s 1,900-acre data center campus in Mount Pleasant, opening early next year, partnered with Gateway Technical College to offer a 12-credit “Microsoft Data Center Certificate.” The two-semester program features courses in information technology, hardware and software support, and server technologies, preparing students for entry-level IT positions, particularly within data center operations, Gateway said. Microsoft said it plans to train more than 1,000 students in five years through the program.
Thousands of construction and indirect jobs
According to an Oct. 20 fact sheet from Port Washington officials, the Lighthouse project “will support approximately 5,800 indirect jobs across suppliers, vendors, and subcontractors.” Vantage said many of these opportunities will go to small businesses.
Additionally, the project’s construction phase “will create 4,000 direct, good-paying jobs, the majority of which will be union positions.” Vantage has said it plans to “prioritize local hiring” throughout the construction process.
Kooyenga said Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant campus provides an example of a “very similar” workforce makeup, both in terms of construction and long-term roles. A Microsoft spokesperson told the Badger Institute that the project saw “nearly 10,000 workers” play a role in construction. The workforce included more than 3,000 construction workers on-site at its peak, including electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, structural iron and steel workers, concrete workers and earth movers, the spokesperson said.
In August, the Badger Institute reported that Microsoft announced it had begun hiring what is expected to be a staff of 500 specialists, as well as contractors, to operate the data center. The Microsoft spokesperson provided a list of full-time role categories, which includes positions in campus management, people management, learning and development, IT operations, mechanical and electrical engineering, security contractors, building maintenance and critical environments roles.
Mount Pleasant communications director Sean Ryan said village officials welcome the Microsoft jobs. “They create more work opportunities for our current residents and can attract more people to live in Mount Pleasant, and the region as a whole, in the future.”
In January, Microsoft paid $35 million for 230 acres in Kenosha, where the spokesperson said the tech giant plans to build a second data center of “similar size and scale” with a comparable number of employees.
Claire Reid is a Milwaukee-based freelance journalist and graduate of the University of Notre Dame. She was most recently a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and has published work in numerous other papers and magazines as a freelancer or intern. Claire was born and raised in Madison. She plans to continue her education in Marquette University’s master of arts in Corporate Communication program in 2026.
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