Data center and AI infrastructure teams in Dallas–Fort Worth

CBRE’s North America Data Center Trends H1 2026 (August 27, 2026) puts Dallas–Fort Worth at 1,432.8 MW of wholesale and colocation inventory, with 767.7 MW under construction and 729.5 MW of that preleased. CBRE adds that developers have a further 3.7 GW of greenfield development planned but not started, and that demand from hyperscale and AI providers remains robust.

Other publishers put the metro at the top. Cushman & Wakefield ranked Dallas the No. 1 primary data center market in the world for the first time (May 20, 2026). JLL, whose figures include capacity hyperscalers own, says the metro “delivered over 2 GW while absorbing even more” in the first half of 2026 (August 11, 2026). That basis is wider than CBRE’s, so the two are not directly comparable.

State filings show what is moving now. The Dallas Morning News reported on September 16, 2026, that at least $1.2 billion of large DFW data center projects had been registered with state officials since August 31. The same report of September 16, 2026, covers Digital Realty’s 672,000-square-foot Garland building, with 10 data hall suites of 8 megawatts each, and DataBank’s $425 million DFW15 addition in Red Oak. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation records add QTS’s $300,000,000 FTW1 expansion in Fort Worth (registered June 16, 2026) and Stack’s DFW02A-P2 in Lancaster (registered December 17, 2025).

The largest campuses are going up south and west of Dallas. Red Oak City Council approved Compass Datacenters’ 830-acre campus in May 2026 (DCD, June 5, 2026). Fort Worth approved a revised plan for Black Mountain’s $10B campus on 187 acres in the southeast of the city (Bisnow, August 27, 2026). Google registered a fifth 288,000-square-foot building at its Midlothian campus, due for completion on February 24, 2027 (TDLR, registered December 8, 2025).

The Texas interconnection-queue audit is still developing. This is the position as we read it on October 11, 2026. On August 3, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every data center advancing through the state’s interconnection queue (POWER, August 4, 2026). He said any project that fails to comply “must be denied connection to the Texas grid”. POWER put the ERCOT large-load queue at 474 GW, approximately 90% of it data centers, in the same report of August 4, 2026.

The state permit pause is also still developing as of October 11, 2026. FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth reported on September 21, 2026, that Abbott had directed TCEQ, the state environmental regulator, to halt all permits sought by data centers until ERCOT completes its audit. The same report of September 21, 2026, said an update on permitting decisions was due by October 19, 2026. ERCOT has said its goal is a December 10 filing and that it will not have its Batch Zero study done by April 9, 2027 (Utility Dive, August 21, 2026).

Oncor’s numbers show the scale behind the audit. Oncor expects approximately 44 gigawatts of large-load requests in its territory to be eligible for ERCOT’s Batch Zero process (Oncor, August 6, 2026). In the same results of August 6, 2026, it reports that its transmission queue held approximately 282 gigawatts of data center requests at the end of the second quarter of 2026. Texas SB 6 applies to loads of 75 MW or more (Utility Dive, June 25, 2025). CBRE says demand for DFW sites below 75 MW has increased (August 27, 2026).

Local and state policy is shifting too. Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously to take the first step toward a 90-day data center moratorium (Fort Worth Report, August 12, 2026). The Fort Worth Report adds that data center applications will have to include proof that the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT have approved their grid connection. Abbott has also suggested ending the state’s sales tax exemption for data centers (Fort Worth Report, August 3, 2026).

Commissioning engineers are advertised openly in Dallas. In ads we read on October 11, 2026, Amazon Web Services listed a Dallas base range of $116,800 to $160,000 a year for a Commissioning Engineer. Crusoe lists $90,000 to $106,000 for a Commissioning Engineer II and $175,000 to $215,000 for a Senior Staff Commissioning Engineer, Electrical, without saying whether those are base or total pay. Crusoe’s ads give Dallas as the location, which may be a reporting base rather than the work site.

Construction leads are in demand alongside them. CoreWeave publishes a base range of $180,000 to $240,000 for a Senior Superintendent in Dallas, and Amazon lists $139,300 to $208,000 a year for a Sr. Construction Manager, Data Center Construction in Dallas (both read October 11, 2026).

Local training is growing at the trades and technician end. Texas State Technical College’s North Texas campus in Red Oak runs a 235-hour MEI Technology Data Center Pathway with Compass Datacenters (TSTC, May 16, 2025). Eleven graduates completed its first cohort (TSTC, November 19, 2025). Google is funding the electrical training ALLIANCE to train more than 1,700 apprentices in Texas by 2030, a statewide figure announced in Midlothian (Google, November 14, 2025). IBEW Local 20 in Grand Prairie runs apprenticeships for DFW electricians.

Our reading of the audit for hiring: buildings already under construction, and projects that already have power, are less exposed than greenfield campuses still waiting for a grid connection. DataBank’s chief executive said its Red Oak addition secured electricity from Oncor and ERCOT two years ago (The Dallas Morning News, September 16, 2026). Near-term commissioning and construction hiring is likely to follow projects like that one.