QTS Data Center Salary Guide 2026 ($91k – $196k)
QTS pays data center floor technicians by the hour and publishes the range on some postings. On September 2, 2026 a Critical Operations Technician I was posted at $27.29 to $41.73 an hour in Ashburn, Virginia, and at $35.47 to $54.25 an hour at another QTS campus in Manassas, Virginia.
Those are QTS’s own numbers. Every band on this page was read off a live posting on the QTS careers site on September 2, 2026, from a sweep of all 288 open QTS jobs worldwide.
You will find QTS technician figures around $79,000 on crowd-sourced sites. Those come from anonymous submissions. QTS prints a real range on its own postings, states the job title it actually hires for, and lists the exact requirement beside it. Almost nobody quotes any of it.
This guide covers the full Critical Operations ladder from Associate to Senior Vice President, what a Critical Operations Technician I really earns and where, the pay scale QTS runs and how it is set, the director and project manager bands, where QTS is hiring right now, and how QTS pay compares against Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Equinix.
QTS data center salary: the key numbers
- $27.29 to $41.73 an hour, the published band for a Critical Operations Technician I in Ashburn, Virginia, about $56,763 to $86,798 a year at 2,080 hours (QTS job posting R2026-1739, read September 2, 2026)
- $35.47 to $54.25 an hour, the published band for the same title in Manassas, Virginia, about $73,778 to $112,840 a year, roughly $17,014 higher at the floor (QTS job postings R2026-1752 and R2026-1833, read September 2, 2026)
- $34.93 to $53.42 an hour, the published band in Chicago, Illinois, about $72,654 to $111,114 a year (QTS job posting R2026-1824, read September 2, 2026)
- $91,694 to $140,225 a year, the band for a Critical Environment Engineer, the degreed engineering role above the technician ladder (QTS job posting R2026-1092, Piscataway NJ, read September 2, 2026)
- $128,254 to $196,135 a year, the band for a Manager, Critical Operations (QTS job posting R2026-1645, Piscataway NJ, read September 2, 2026)
- 36 of 288 open postings carried a published pay range on September 2, 2026, every one of them posted in Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado, Iowa or Kansas (QTS careers site, read September 2, 2026)
QTS publishes the pay band on its own job postings
Near the bottom of some QTS job descriptions sits a paragraph most candidates scroll straight past. It reads like this, word for word:
QTS adds one qualifier around it: the figure is provided for candidates hired in that state, the role stays open to candidates elsewhere at compensation aligned to their location, and the starting figure is set on what QTS calls permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience and geographic location.
Two things follow from that. The range is real, because QTS is publishing it against a named state. And the range is local, because QTS names one state per posting rather than one national band.
The catch is coverage. Of 288 open QTS jobs on September 2, 2026, only 36 carried a range at all. The rest published nothing. So a QTS pay figure is either read off a posting or it is somebody’s estimate, and this page keeps the requisition number beside every figure so you can tell which is which.
For a read on how QTS compares against the market as a whole, see the national data center technician salary guide.
The QTS Critical Operations ladder in 2026
QTS runs one ladder on the data center floor and it is not called technician I, II and III in the way most guides describe. The posted titles are Critical Operations Associate, Critical Operations Technician I and Critical Operations Technician II, then Supervisor, Manager and Senior Manager, Critical Operations. Every band below came off a live posting.
| Rung, as QTS posts it | What QTS requires | Published band | Where it was read | Annualized at 2,080 hrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Operations Associate | High school diploma or technical college degree, plus one or more years of technical training, military training or equivalent professional work experience | Not published | R2026-1807, Cedar Rapids IA | Not listed |
| Critical Operations Technician I | Two or more years of technical training, military training or workplace equivalency, and a background in IT, electrical or mechanical | $27.29–$41.73 / hr | R2026-1739, Ashburn VA | $56,763–$86,798 |
| Critical Operations Technician I | Same posting language | $35.47–$54.25 / hr | R2026-1752 and R2026-1833, Manassas VA | $73,778–$112,840 |
| Critical Operations Technician I | Same posting language | $34.93–$53.42 / hr | R2026-1824, Chicago IL | $72,654–$111,114 |
| Critical Operations Technician II | Five or more years of technical training, military training or workplace equivalency. Two or more years in a data center or NOC preferred | Not published | R2026-1643 and R2026-1644, Eemshaven | Not listed |
| Supervisor, Critical Operations | Four or more years of workplace or relevant industry experience, plus previous direct or indirect people leadership | Not published | R2026-1526 Cedar Rapids IA, R2026-1895 York SC | Not listed |
| Manager, Critical Operations | Five or more years of workplace experience and five or more years of people leadership | $128,254–$196,135 / yr | R2026-1645, Piscataway NJ | Posted as salary |
| Senior Manager, Critical Operations | Technical strategy and continuous improvement across a site, above the manager rung | Not published | R2026-1943, York SC | Posted as salary |
| Critical Environment Engineer | Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, five or more years of engineering in a critical environment, HVAC or critical power certification, travel up to 50%, US citizenship on federal-customer roles | $91,694–$140,225 / yr | R2026-1092, Piscataway NJ | Posted as salary |
| Manager, Facilities Operations Engineer | Engineering coordination and technical strategy across QTS sites | $120,000–$160,000 / yr | R2026-1973, Cedar Rapids IA | Posted as salary |
| Senior Manager, Data Center Infrastructure Management | Electrical engineering background, leads the EPMS and BMS team | $156,525–$239,369 / yr | R2026-1509, Chicago IL | Posted as salary |
| Senior Vice President, Facilities Operations | Top of the operations organisation | $259,782–$397,276 / yr | R2026-1678, Ashburn VA | Posted as salary |
How we built this table. Every band was read from a live QTS job posting on September 2, 2026, from a sweep of all 288 open QTS requisitions worldwide. QTS states the figure as “the estimated pay range for this role, if based in [state], is,” and adds that the role stays open to candidates outside that state at compensation aligned to their location.
Rows marked “not published” mean the posting carried no range at all, which was true of 252 of the 288 open postings that day. Annualized figures multiply the posted hourly rate by 2,080 hours and are arithmetic on our part, not a QTS figure. QTS states that every employee is bonus or commission eligible and publishes no bonus target, so no total compensation figure appears on this page as a fact.
QTS prices the campus, not the region
Ashburn and Manassas are both Northern Virginia. Both postings carry the identical job description, the identical two-year requirement and the identical benefits list. The Ashburn band starts at $27.29 an hour. The Manassas band starts at $35.47.
That is $8.18 an hour, about $17,014 a year, for the same title at a second campus in the same market. It is a 30 percent gap at the floor.
Anyone applying to QTS in Northern Virginia should apply to both and compare the offers, because no recruiter is going to volunteer that gap.
The leadership rung opens before the senior technical rung
Supervisor, Critical Operations asks for four or more years of experience plus some people leadership. Critical Operations Technician II asks for five or more years of technical training.
At QTS you can be running a shift before you qualify for the next technician grade. If you want to stay technical rather than manage people, the honest next step is Critical Environment Engineer, which needs a degree and five years in a critical environment.
Technician II is not a United States job right now
On September 2, 2026 both open Critical Operations Technician II roles were in Eemshaven, Netherlands, and neither published pay. There were no open Technician III postings anywhere.
Anyone told they are being hired as a QTS Critical Operations Technician II in the United States should ask which requisition and which band, because the title was not on the US board.
The engineering jump is worth less than the management jump
A Critical Environment Engineer in Piscataway, New Jersey publishes $91,694 to $140,225. A Manager, Critical Operations at the same site publishes $128,254 to $196,135.
The engineer needs a degree and five years of critical-environment work. The manager needs five years of people leadership on top of five years of experience. The ceiling difference is about $56,000, and the road to it is people management rather than technical depth.
QTS Critical Operations Technician salary
Critical Operations Technician is the job title QTS uses for the person on the data center floor. It is not “data center technician” and it is not “critical facility technician.” Searching for either of those on the QTS careers site returns the wrong jobs or none.
Critical Operations Technician I pay
Four of the eleven open Critical Operations Technician I postings published a band on September 2, 2026, across three campuses:
- Manassas, Virginia: $35.47 to $54.25 an hour, about $73,778 to $112,840 a year, on two separate postings
- Chicago, Illinois: $34.93 to $53.42 an hour, about $72,654 to $111,114 a year
- Ashburn, Virginia: $27.29 to $41.73 an hour, about $56,763 to $86,798 a year
The other seven published no range: New Albany Ohio, Richmond Virginia, Cedar Rapids Iowa on two postings, Wilmer Texas, Eagle Mountain Utah and Hillsboro Oregon.
What QTS asks for
Two or more years of technical training, military training or workplace equivalency. A background in IT, electrical or mechanical work. Proficiency with Microsoft Office. That is the entire required list. No degree, and military training counts as the qualifying training rather than as a nice extra.
Preferred qualifications, which move you up inside the band rather than gate the application: one or more years of work experience in a data center, a network operations center or equivalent, and certifications from a named list of BOD OEM credentials from Panduit and Corning, CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+ and BICSI Installer I.
What the job actually involves
The posting splits the work in two, and most salary pages only describe half of it.
The facilities half is preventive maintenance on mechanical and electrical equipment, recording readings and adjusting equipment, processing work orders on critical, building and site infrastructure, monitoring critical and non-critical systems, and responding to building emergencies.
The customer half is colocation work: remote hands and eyes for customers on the floor, installing suite wall, cage material, ladder rack, fiber tray, cabinets and cabling, configuring customer hardware and software, and opening, updating and closing tickets. Both preventive and corrective maintenance run through QTS’s change management process for approval before the work starts.
Two conditions are worth knowing before you apply. The role supports a 24x7x365 environment and QTS states plainly that it is not eligible for remote or hybrid work. And the posting sets a physical requirement: frequent typing, standing, walking, pushing, pulling, bending, reaching and lifting, with lifting from under 10 pounds up to 50 pounds on a regular basis and anything heavier done with a second person or a lifting aid.
Night shift at QTS
QTS posts nights as its own requisition, titled Critical Operations Technician I (Nights), and had two open on September 2, 2026, in Eagle Mountain, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona.
The requirements are word for word identical to the day postings. Neither published a pay range, and neither published a shift differential.
The QTS pay scale, explained
QTS does not publish a pay scale as a document. What it publishes is a range on individual postings, and those ranges add up to a scale you can read off the board. Five things shape it.
Floor roles are hourly, management is salaried. Critical Operations Associate, Technician I and Technician II are all posted as an hourly range. Manager and above are posted as an annual salary. The switch happens around Supervisor, Critical Operations.
Every band is wide on purpose. QTS bands run roughly 50 to 55 percent from floor to ceiling. Technician I in Chicago is $34.93 to $53.42, a spread of $18.49 an hour. QTS says the starting figure is set on skills, experience and geographic location. A band that wide means the interview decides where in it you land, and the posting is telling you how much room there is.
A skills assessment places you in the band. Every technician posting lists “the ability to pass job-related skills assessments based on pre-determined scoring criteria and time frames” under required abilities. That is the mechanism. Ask what the assessment covers before you sit it.
The scale is set per campus, not per region. QTS names one state per posting and publishes a range for that state only. Two campuses in the same state can be far apart, as Ashburn and Manassas are by $8.18 an hour at the floor. Treat the QTS pay scale as a site-level scale.
Most postings publish nothing. Thirty-six of 288 open jobs carried a range. If the posting you are reading has no range, the nearest published comparable on this page is the best proxy available.
QTS salaries beyond the technician ladder
QTS publishes bands well past the data center floor. Every row below came off a live posting on September 2, 2026.
| Posted title | Location | Published annual band | Category | Posting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior Director, Development (Electrical Engineering) | Remote, Virginia | $189,070–$289,139 | Development and construction | R2026-1698 |
| Director, Federal Solutions Engineering | Ashburn, Virginia | $170,840–$261,259 | Sales and marketing | R2026-1760 |
| Director, Regulatory Compliance | Richmond, Virginia | $157,337–$240,611 | Development and construction | R2026-1931 |
| Senior Solutions Engineer, Strategic Accounts | Ashburn, Virginia | $157,031–$240,142 | Sales and marketing | R2026-1381 |
| Program Director, Enterprise Enablement | Ashburn, Virginia | $153,075–$234,093 | Information technology | R2026-1857 |
| Senior Corporate Counsel, Power and Utilities | Richmond, Virginia | $149,557–$228,712 | Legal | R2026-1614 |
| Strategic Account Director | Ashburn, Virginia | $146,250–$223,655 | Sales and marketing | R2026-1686 |
| Director, Development Schedule Management | Richmond, Virginia | $144,728–$218,056 | Development and construction | R2026-1918 |
| Corporate Counsel, Contracts | Ashburn, Virginia | $137,365–$210,067 | Legal | R2026-1813 |
| Principal DCIM Design Engineer | Kansas | $133,300–$227,500 | Development and construction | 2 open postings |
| Principal DCIM Controls Build Quality Engineer | Kansas | $125,837–$214,763 | Development and construction | 1 open posting |
| Development Project Manager (Data Center Construction) | Chicago, Illinois | $121,440–$185,714 | Development and construction | R2026-1511 |
| Cost Control Manager | Chicago, Illinois | $113,623–$173,759 | Development and construction | R2026-1794 |
| Senior Analyst, Insurance and Risk | Ashburn, Virginia | $112,613–$172,215 | Finance | R2026-1617 |
| Project Manager III | Ashburn, Virginia | $109,395–$167,294 | Information technology | R2026-1348 |
| People Services Business Partner, Critical Operations | Ashburn, Virginia | $97,503–$149,108 | People services | R2026-0825 |
| Security Operations Engineer | Denver, Colorado | $89,405–$136,725 | Facility operations | R2026-1725 |
| Commissioning Engineer II | Richmond VA and Denver CO | $89,322–$136,598 | Information technology | R2026-1920, R2026-1861 |
| Land Development Project Specialist | Denver, Colorado | $88,964–$136,049 | Development and construction | R2026-1574 |
| Senior Project Manager, Interior Design | Richmond, Virginia | $82,204–$125,711 | Development and construction | R2026-1922 |
| Federal Assurance Operations Analyst | Manassas, Virginia | $64,622–$98,824 | Security and compliance | R2026-1603 |
| Summer 2027 internships, four postings | Ashburn, Sterling and Manassas VA | $19.50–$29.82 / hr | Internship | R2026-1888, 1889, 1902, 1903 |
Project management is QTS’s biggest job, not technician work
Of 288 open QTS postings on September 2, 2026, 69 had “project manager” or “program manager” in the title, and 117 sat in the property development and construction category. Facility operations, which covers every technician, engineer, supervisor and manager on the floor, accounted for 54.
QTS is hiring roughly two builders for every operator, and the pay follows. The published construction project manager band in Chicago starts about $48,800 above the annualized Technician I floor at the same campus. The data center construction salary guide covers that side of the industry in full.
What a QTS director makes
Four director bands were published on September 2, 2026 and they cluster tightly: $144,728 to $218,056 for Director, Development Schedule Management, $157,337 to $240,611 for Director, Regulatory Compliance, and $170,840 to $261,259 for Director, Federal Solutions Engineering. Senior director in electrical engineering development runs $189,070 to $289,139.
Above that sits Senior Vice President, Facilities Operations at $259,782 to $397,276. That is the top of the published range at QTS.
Security and engineering pay, and the honest gap
QTS published no band for its open Security Operations Manager II role in Fayetteville, Georgia. The nearest published figure is Security Operations Engineer in Denver, Colorado at $89,405 to $136,725 a year, bonus eligible. Treat that as the neighbourhood rather than the answer, and note it is a very different job from a contract security officer on a QTS gate. The data center security officer salary guide covers the officer side.
On the engineering side, Critical Environment Engineer at $91,694 to $140,225 is the QTS version of the role most of the industry calls a critical facilities engineer, and Commissioning Engineer II publishes $89,322 to $136,598. See the critical facilities engineer salary and commissioning engineer salary guides for the market rates.
What QTS pays by years of experience
QTS states a years requirement on every rung, so the ladder maps cleanly onto experience. This is the mapping, with the published band where one exists.
| Years of experience | The QTS rung it maps to | What QTS requires | Published band, September 2, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | Critical Operations Associate | High school diploma or technical college degree, plus one year of technical or military training | Not published |
| 2 to 4 | Critical Operations Technician I | Two years of technical training, military training or workplace equivalency | $27.29 to $54.25 an hour, depending on campus |
| 4 or more, with some leadership | Supervisor, Critical Operations | Four years of workplace or industry experience plus previous people leadership | Not published |
| 5 or more, technical track | Critical Operations Technician II | Five years of technical or military training, two years in a data center or NOC preferred | Not published, and open only in the Netherlands |
| 5 or more, with a degree | Critical Environment Engineer | Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, five years of critical-environment engineering, HVAC or critical power certification | $91,694 to $140,225 a year |
| 5 to 7, management track | Manager, Critical Operations | Five years of workplace experience plus five years of people leadership | $128,254 to $196,135 a year |
| 7 or more | Senior Manager, Critical Operations | Site technical strategy above the manager rung | Not published |
| 10 or more | Senior Manager, Data Center Infrastructure Management, then Director | Electrical engineering background and team leadership | $156,525 to $239,369 at senior manager, $144,728 to $289,139 across the four published director bands |
QTS vs Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Equinix technician pay
| Employer | Title the employer actually posts | Published band | Annualized at 2,080 hrs | Midpoint | Source and date read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft, entry | Data Center Technician (ATR-B) | $23.65–$37.07 / hr | $49,192–$77,106 | $63,100 | Microsoft careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Equinix, Dallas TX | Data Center Customer Operations IV, night shift | $53,600–$80,400 / yr | Salaried | $67,000 | Equinix careers, Sept 3, 2026 |
| QTS, Ashburn VA | Critical Operations Technician I | $27.29–$41.73 / hr | $56,763–$86,798 | $71,800 | QTS careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| CoreWeave, eight US markets | Data Center Technician | $65,000–$83,000 / yr | Salaried | $74,000 | CoreWeave careers, Sept 5, 2026 |
| CoreWeave, Ellendale ND | Data Center Technician | $65,000–$85,000 / yr | Salaried | $75,000 | CoreWeave careers, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Amazon, server track, Canton and Vicksburg MS | Data Center Technician | $27.83–$48.75 / hr | $57,886–$101,400 | $79,600 | amazon.jobs posting 10440148, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Digital Realty, Ashburn VA | Site Engineer I | $37.50–$41.00 / hr | $78,000–$85,280 | $81,600 | Digital Realty careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Meta, Aurora IL | Data Center Production Operations Engineer | $33.17–$47.60 / hr | $68,994–$99,008 | $84,000 | Meta posting text, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Equinix, Ashburn VA | Data Center Critical Facilities IV | $67,400–$101,000 / yr | Salaried | $84,200 | Equinix careers, Sept 3, 2026 |
| Oracle, Allen TX | Data Center Technician 2 | $27.07–$54.13 / hr | $56,300–$112,600 | $84,400 | Oracle posting 38545974, Sept 3, 2026 |
| Amazon, server track, NC, NV, OR and TX | Data Center Technician, posted in some markets as DCO Tech | $30.91–$54.18 / hr | $64,293–$112,694 | $88,500 | amazon.jobs posting 10440148, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Equinix, Silicon Valley | Data Center Critical Facilities Technician | $73,400–$110,200 / yr | Salaried | $91,800 | Equinix careers, Sept 3, 2026 |
| QTS, Manassas VA | Critical Operations Technician I | $35.47–$54.25 / hr | $73,778–$112,840 | $93,300 | QTS careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Microsoft, senior | Senior Data Center Technician (ATR-D) | $34.13–$56.54 / hr | $70,990–$117,603 | $94,300 | Microsoft careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Google, entry | Data Center Technician II | $86,000–$118,000 / yr | Salaried | $102,000 | careers.google.com, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Meta, Mesa AZ and Los Lunas NM | Data Center Production Operations Engineer | $83,990–$130,000 / yr | Salaried | $107,000 | Meta posting text, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Amazon, facilities track, Northern Virginia and Frederick MD | Data Center Engineering Operations Technician | $37.64–$65.91 / hr | $78,291–$137,093 | $107,700 | amazon.jobs posting 3146851, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Digital Realty, Ashburn and Sterling VA | Lead Engineer | $52.73–$54.80 / hr | $109,678–$113,984 | $111,800 | Digital Realty careers, Sept 2, 2026 |
| Meta, Reynoldsburg OH | Data Center Production Operations Engineer | $51.92–$74.04 / hr | $107,994–$154,003 | $131,000 | Meta posting text, Sept 6, 2026 |
| Google, senior | Data Center Technician, IV | $122,000–$173,000 / yr | Salaried | $147,500 | careers.google.com, Sept 2, 2026 |
| OpenAI | No data center technician postings. Its sites are staffed by the companies that build and run them | Not published | Not published | Not published | openai.com/careers, Sept 3, 2026 |
How we built this table. Every row is a pay range the employer published on a live requisition, read on the date in the last column. Amazon and Meta rows carry the posting number or the market they were read from. The Meta rows come from the posting text itself, republished verbatim on third-party job boards, because metacareers.com would not render for us on September 6, 2026.
The midpoint column is arithmetic on our part, not an employer figure: it is the middle of the published band, annualized at 2,080 hours where the band is hourly. Two caveats apply to every row. Each employer publishes a new-hire range, which is not the same thing as an offer. And none of them publishes the equity grant that sits on top, so no total compensation comparison is possible from published data alone.
What is not here. No figure in this table came from Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Salary.com, Levels.fyi, PayScale, Comparably or Blind.
QTS pays entry technicians roughly what a hyperscaler pays senior ones.
Microsoft’s senior technician band is $34.13 to $56.54 an hour. QTS’s Manassas Technician I band is $35.47 to $54.25. The QTS floor for a job asking two years of technical training sits $1.34 an hour above the Microsoft floor for a job asking two years of experience plus a preference for an associate’s degree and five more years.
Against the other colocation operator with a published band, the gap is wider. The Equinix Chicago Customer Support Data Center Technician posting reads $58,000 to $88,000 a year. The QTS Chicago Technician I band annualizes to $72,654 to $111,114, roughly 25 percent higher at both ends, on comparable work in the same city.
Two caveats, and both matter. QTS publishes a band on only 36 of 288 postings, so the three campuses above are the ones you can check rather than a national picture, and the seven other open Technician I postings could sit anywhere. And the Equinix figure comes from a posting dated September 23, 2025, so it is a year old.
Where QTS clearly loses is structured progression. Amazon publishes L1 to L6. Google runs a numbered technician ladder with equity and a bonus target. QTS publishes Associate, Technician I and Technician II, and Technician II was not open anywhere in the United States on September 2, 2026.
Full detail on each sits in the Microsoft data center technician salary guide, the Amazon data center technician salary guide, the Google data center technician salary guide and the Digital Realty data center salary guide.
QTS data center locations and what each campus runs
QTS lists 23 operating campuses across the United States and the Netherlands. These are the sites, with the acreage and capacity QTS publishes for each.
| Campus | Location | Acres | Capacity | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta 1 | Atlanta, Georgia | 99 | 278 MW and up | Largest operating QTS campus by capacity |
| Richmond 1 | Sandston, Virginia | 100 | 240 MW and up | Three more Richmond campuses in development |
| Manassas 1 | Manassas, Virginia | 105 | 190 MW and up | Largest QTS site by land, and the highest published technician band |
| Hillsboro 2 | Hillsboro, Oregon | 51 | 180 MW and up | Paired with Hillsboro 1, a third in development |
| Irving | Irving, Texas | 56 | 165 MW and up | Dallas market |
| Denver | Aurora, Colorado | 65 | 160 MW and up | Posted as Denver, sited in Aurora |
| Chicago | Chicago, Illinois | 30 | 95 MW and up | Carrier-dense metro site |
| San Antonio | San Antonio, Texas | 32 | 90 MW and up | Known locally by its Potranco address |
| Ashburn 3 | Ashburn, Virginia | 25 | 80 MW and up | Data Center Alley |
| Ashburn 2 | Sterling, Virginia | 24 | 75 MW and up | Posted as Ashburn, sited in Sterling |
| East Windsor | East Windsor, New Jersey | 52 | 70 MW and up | New Jersey pair with Piscataway |
| Fort Worth | Fort Worth, Texas | 52 | 70 MW and up | Second Dallas-Fort Worth campus |
| Piscataway | Piscataway Township, New Jersey | 38 | 65 MW and up | Where the New Jersey salaried bands are published |
| Ashburn 1 | Sterling, Virginia | 28 | 55 MW and up | Oldest of the Ashburn cluster |
| Suwanee 1 | Suwanee, Georgia | 53 | 50 MW and up | Second Georgia campus |
| Eemshaven | Eemshaven, Netherlands | Not listed | 20 MW | Where Technician II is posted |
| Hillsboro 1 | Hillsboro, Oregon | 25 | 20 MW and up | Portland market |
| Colorado Springs | Colorado Springs, Colorado | 21 | 14 MW and up | Smallest US campus with published acreage above 20 |
| Santa Clara | Santa Clara, California | 4 | 7.5 MW | Silicon Valley footprint |
| Ashburn Moran | Sterling, Virginia | 3 | 4 MW and up | Small satellite site |
| Groningen | Groningen, Netherlands | Not listed | 4 MW | Netherlands satellite |
| Sacramento | Sacramento, California | 7 | 4 MW | Small California site |
| Miami | Miami, Florida | 1 | 2 MW | Smallest campus on the list |
Another 26 sites are in development or under consideration, which is why the hiring map does not match the map above.
In development: Richmond 2, 3 and 5 in Virginia; Augusta, Blakely and Fayetteville in Georgia; Hall County and South Dallas at Wilmer in Texas; Cedar Rapids in Iowa; Phoenix 2, Phoenix 3 in Glendale and Phoenix 4 in Avondale, Arizona; Hillsboro 3 in Oregon; New Albany 1, New Albany 2 and Van Wert in Ohio; Bessemer in Alabama; York County in South Carolina; Eagle Mountain in Utah; and Cambois in the United Kingdom.
Under consideration: Howard County, Texas; Clinton, Iowa; Salem Township, Pennsylvania; Calatorao, Spain; Vimercate, Italy; and Forssa, Finland.
QTS runs its head office out of Overland Park, Kansas, which is why 30 of its open postings sit in a state with no QTS data center. For the local markets, see the data center jobs in Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Phoenix guides.
Where QTS is hiring right now
Counted from the QTS careers site on September 2, 2026, across all 288 open requisitions.
| State or region | Open QTS postings | What is there | Campus status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 76 | Atlanta and Suwanee campuses, the Duluth office, plus Augusta, Blakely and Fayetteville builds | Operating and building |
| Virginia | 40 | Ashburn, Sterling, Manassas and Richmond, plus remote Virginia requisitions | Operating and building |
| Texas | 38 | Irving, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Wilmer and Hall County | Operating and building |
| Kansas | 30 | Overland Park head office. No QTS data center in the state | Corporate only |
| Iowa | 26 | Cedar Rapids, plus Clinton under consideration | Not yet operating |
| Utah | 14 | Eagle Mountain | Not yet operating |
| Arizona | 13 | Phoenix 2, Glendale and Avondale | Not yet operating |
| South Carolina | 9 | York County | Not yet operating |
| Ohio | 6 | New Albany 1 and 2, Van Wert | Not yet operating |
| Pennsylvania | 5 | Salem Township development office | Under consideration |
| Illinois | 4 | Chicago | Operating |
| Colorado | 3 | Aurora and Colorado Springs | Operating |
| Oregon | 3 | Hillsboro 1, 2 and 3 | Operating and building |
| Tennessee | 3 | No campus listed | Corporate or field |
| New Jersey | 2 | Piscataway and East Windsor | Operating |
| North Carolina | 2 | Remote requisitions | No campus |
| Europe and unlisted | 12 | Eemshaven and Groningen in the Netherlands, London, Cambois in the UK | Operating and building |
QTS staffs a campus before it opens
Iowa, Utah, Ohio and South Carolina carried 55 of QTS’s 288 open postings, and not one of those four states has an operating QTS campus.
Cedar Rapids alone had a Critical Operations Associate, four Technician I roles, a Supervisor, a Manager of Facilities Operations Engineering, a Commissioning Engineer II and a water quality engineer, on a site QTS still lists as in development.
If you want to get hired at QTS at the earliest rung, apply where the concrete is still being poured rather than where the campus is already running.
Two builders hired for every operator
Property development and construction was the largest category on the board with 117 openings. Facility operations had 54. Information technology had 38, finance 17, sales and marketing 12, legal 8.
A colocation operator with more construction project managers open than floor technicians is a company in the middle of a build, and the pay reflects it.
What QTS publishes about bonus, benefits and shift
Bonus
QTS states on every posting that “every employee is bonus or commission eligible.” Some postings add a separate line reading “this position is Bonus eligible.”
QTS does not publish a bonus target or a percentage for any role, so any specific bonus figure you read for a QTS job is somebody’s estimate rather than a QTS number.
Retirement and stock
QTS publishes Roth and traditional 401(k) matching contributions with immediate vesting, and does not publish the match percentage.
Immediate vesting is the part worth understanding. The matched money is yours on day one rather than after a three or four year cliff, which changes what a two-year stint at QTS is worth against a competitor that holds the match back.
QTS also lists a Stock Purchase Plan, shortened to SPP on the posting. QTS shares have not traded publicly since Blackstone took the company private on August 31, 2021, so ask a recruiter what the plan actually holds and how it is valued before counting it as compensation.
Time off
What QTS publishes: generous PTO, paid volunteer days plus floating holidays, 11 paid holidays annually with holiday compensation when a holiday is worked, parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers, and the Q-Rest Sabbatical Program.
The holiday-pay-when-worked line matters on a 24x7x365 floor, because technicians work holidays as a matter of routine.
The rest of the published benefits list
Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance. Flexible spending and HSA accounts. Employee assistance program. Tuition Reimbursement Program. Pet and legal insurance. Military Benefits Package and military leave assistance. QTS Charitable Matching Gift Program. QTS Scholarship for Employee Dependents. QTS Crisis Fund. Wellness Program. Q-Anniversary Service Award Program.
QTS states on its careers site that more than 20 percent of its United States workforce has served in the military, which lines up with military training counting as a qualifying credential on the technician postings rather than as a nice extra.
Shift and shift differential
QTS publishes no shift differential. Both open Critical Operations Technician I (Nights) postings on September 2, 2026, in Eagle Mountain, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona, carried the same requirements as the day postings and no premium.
Floor roles support a 24x7x365 environment and QTS states they are not eligible for remote or hybrid work. If a recruiter quotes you a night premium, get it in the written offer, because it is not on the posting.
What QTS stands for, and who owns it
QTS stands for Quality Technology Services. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Blackstone took QTS private on August 31, 2021 in a deal worth about $10 billion, so QTS shares no longer trade on a public market. The legal entity in its own website footer is QTS Realty Trust, LLC. QTS has since moved its website to q.com and adopted a new mark, so “Q” and “QTS” refer to the same company.
Who runs it. Founder Chad Williams stepped down as chief executive and chairman in April 2025. QTS is now led by co-chief executives David Robey and Thomas “Tag” Greason, with Stephen Douglas as chief financial officer, Ryan Hunter as chief operations officer and Brian Herlihy as chief development officer.
How big it is, and why it is hiring. QTS is private and publishes no revenue or headcount figure. What has been reported is the growth. Under Blackstone, QTS expanded commissioned capacity from 400 megawatts to 3 gigawatts and grew its development pipeline from about $1 billion to about $25 billion, and Blackstone bought out Williams’s remaining stake in March 2025 in a deal that valued the business at a reported $60 billion, according to Yahoo Finance on July 17, 2025.
QTS’s own site lists 23 operating campuses, 26 more in development or under consideration, and claims more than 30 facilities running on 100 percent carbon-free operational electricity.
That is the context behind 288 open jobs and 117 of them in construction. QTS is not replacing leavers. It is staffing a build that has grown more than sevenfold in capacity in four years.
How to get hired at QTS and negotiate the band
Search the right title. QTS posts floor work as Critical Operations Associate, Critical Operations Technician, Critical Operations Technician I, Critical Operations Technician I (Nights) and Critical Operations Technician II. A search for “data center technician” misses all of them.
Apply to more than one campus. Ashburn and Manassas carry identical postings and bands $8.18 an hour apart at the floor. Applying to the right requisition is worth more than any negotiation inside the wrong one.
Read the pay paragraph before anything else. If the posting names a state and a range, you know the floor and the ceiling before the recruiter calls. If it does not, ask for the range in the first call and name the published comparable from this page.
Ask what the skills assessment covers. QTS lists passing a job-related skills assessment as a required ability on every technician posting, and that assessment is what places you in a band 50 percent wide. It is the single highest-leverage question you can ask.
Anchor to a number inside the published band. A counter of “$44 an hour” backed by three years of hands-on mechanical and electrical work beats “somewhere in the upper half.”
Ask about the immediate 401(k) vesting in writing. QTS publishes it and most competitors do not match it. On a two or three year stay it is worth real money, and it belongs in the total comp comparison rather than the benefits footnote.
Get any night premium in the offer letter. QTS posts nights as a separate requisition with no published differential. If someone tells you nights pay more, that needs to be in writing.
For the wider picture on where these roles lead, see the data center career path guide.
Common FAQs about QTS data center salary
What is the QTS data center salary in 2026?
QTS pays floor technicians hourly. Its published bands on September 2, 2026 ran $27.29 to $41.73 an hour for a Critical Operations Technician I in Ashburn, Virginia and $34.93 to $53.42 in Chicago. Published salaried roles above the ladder ran from $91,694 to $397,276 a year.
What is a QTS critical operations technician salary?
Critical Operations Technician is QTS’s floor technician title. Published Technician I bands on September 2, 2026 were $27.29 to $41.73 an hour in Ashburn, Virginia, $35.47 to $54.25 in Manassas, Virginia and $34.93 to $53.42 in Chicago, Illinois, before overtime.
What is a Critical Operations Technician I salary at QTS?
Technician I is the second rung, above Critical Operations Associate. QTS asks for two years of technical training, military training or workplace equivalency. Published bands on September 2, 2026 ranged from $27.29 an hour at the Ashburn floor to $54.25 at the Manassas ceiling.
What is a critical operations associate salary at QTS?
QTS published no band for its open Critical Operations Associate role in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on September 2, 2026. It is the entry rung: a high school diploma or technical college degree plus one year of technical training, military training or equivalent work experience.
What does a QTS director make?
Director bands published on September 2, 2026: Director, Development Schedule Management in Richmond, Virginia at $144,728 to $218,056, Director, Regulatory Compliance at $157,337 to $240,611, and Senior Director, Development in electrical engineering at $189,070 to $289,139 a year.
What does a QTS project manager make?
Two published project manager bands on September 2, 2026: Development Project Manager for data center construction in Chicago at $121,440 to $185,714, and Project Manager III in Ashburn, Virginia at $109,395 to $167,294. Construction project management is QTS’s largest hiring category.
What does a QTS security operations manager make?
QTS published no band for Security Operations Manager II in Fayetteville, Georgia on September 2, 2026. The closest published figure is Security Operations Engineer in Denver, Colorado at $89,405 to $136,725 a year, bonus eligible.
Does QTS pay a shift differential?
No QTS posting published one on September 2, 2026, including both open Critical Operations Technician I (Nights) roles in Eagle Mountain, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona. QTS does publish holiday compensation when a holiday is worked, and says every employee is bonus or commission eligible.
Is QTS a good company to work for?
Judge it on what QTS publishes: 401(k) matching with immediate vesting, a stock purchase plan, 11 paid holidays with pay when worked, the Q-Rest sabbatical program, tuition reimbursement and a scholarship for employees’ dependents. Every floor role is on-site, 24x7x365, with no remote option.
What does QTS stand for and who owns it?
QTS stands for Quality Technology Services. Blackstone took the company private on August 31, 2021 for about $10 billion, so QTS shares no longer trade publicly. QTS is led by co-chief executives David Robey and Tag Greason, appointed in April 2025.
Sources and how we collected this data
Last updated: September 2, 2026. Every pay band on this page was read from a live QTS job posting on that date, from a sweep of all 288 open QTS requisitions worldwide. QTS states its figure as “the estimated pay range for this role, if based in [state], is,” and notes that the role stays open to candidates outside that state at compensation aligned to their location. Where this page says a band is not published, the posting carried no range at all, which was the case on 252 of the 288 open postings that day. Annual figures for hourly roles multiply the posted rate by 2,080 hours and are arithmetic on our part, not a QTS figure. QTS says every employee is bonus or commission eligible and publishes no bonus target, so no total compensation figure appears here as a fact.
Postings read for this guide include Critical Operations Technician I roles in Ashburn, Manassas and Richmond Virginia, Chicago Illinois, New Albany Ohio, Cedar Rapids Iowa, Wilmer Texas, Eagle Mountain Utah and Hillsboro Oregon, requisitions R2026-1739, R2026-1752, R2026-1833, R2026-1389, R2026-1824, R2026-1841, R2026-1188, R2026-1638, R2026-1758, R2026-0038, R2026-1839, R2026-1576 and R2026-1599; the two Critical Operations Technician I (Nights) postings R2026-1744 and R2026-1880; Critical Operations Associate R2026-1807; Critical Operations Technician II R2026-1643 and R2026-1644; Supervisor, Critical Operations R2026-1526 and R2026-1895; Manager, Critical Operations R2026-1645; Senior Manager, Critical Operations R2026-1943; Critical Environment Engineer R2026-1092; Manager, Facilities Operations Engineer R2026-1973; Senior Manager, Data Center Infrastructure Management R2026-1509; and Senior Vice President, Facilities Operations R2026-1678.
The director, project manager, engineering, legal, finance, security and internship bands come from requisitions R2026-1698, R2026-1760, R2026-1931, R2026-1918, R2026-1381, R2026-1857, R2026-1614, R2026-1686, R2026-1813, R2026-1511, R2026-1794, R2026-1617, R2026-1348, R2026-0825, R2026-1725, R2026-1920, R2026-1861, R2026-1574, R2026-1922 and R2026-1603, plus the two Kansas Principal DCIM postings and the four Summer 2027 internship postings, all read September 2, 2026.
Campus acreage and capacity, the development and consideration pipeline, the facility count, the carbon-free electricity claim, the veteran workforce share and the leadership team come from QTS’s own site at q.com, read September 2, 2026. The founding year, the Overland Park headquarters, the August 31, 2021 Blackstone close and the April 2025 leadership change are corroborated by public reporting on the same date. The capacity growth from 400 megawatts to 3 gigawatts, the pipeline growth from about $1 billion to about $25 billion and the reported $60 billion valuation come from Yahoo Finance, July 17, 2025.
Competitor bands come from each employer’s own pay statement on its postings: Microsoft, Google and Meta read September 2, 2026, and Amazon read September 1 and 2, 2026. The Equinix figure comes from a Customer Support Data Center Technician posting dated September 23, 2025 and is labelled with that date wherever it appears, because it is the only comparable Equinix band published in the open.
Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Salary.com, Levels.fyi and third-party survey figures do not appear anywhere on this page. QTS publishes enough of the real numbers itself.
No other page has assembled QTS’s own posted bands for the whole Critical Operations ladder in one table. That is what the ladder table above is.
