EDGERTON Local manufacturers are wading into the business of data center development, and it shows in recent hiring activity thats rolling out as major, hyperscale data center projects in southern Wisconsin and nationwide roll through multi-billion dollar construction phases.
On Edgertons west edge, a factory complex that for years was an idled former truck body and trailer manufacturing factory now houses California-based electrical equipment manufacturer Cupertino Electric.
Now, Cupertino is , some for notably high-paying jobs, tied to the companys work in modular electrical equipment systems full-scale, prefabricated electrical control rooms designed for use in new data centers.
Its part of the new tech economy, and its spread to main street in small-town Wisconsin comes at the same time as Rock County is being eyed as a potential nexus for data center projects.
Some of Cupertinos recent listings, highlighted on several online employment websites, are for engineering leadership jobs in product engineering. Two jobs, a product developer and senior product developer, show annual pay between $104,000 and $130,000.
The hiring push comes against a backdrop of otherwise flat job growth in the regional job market, and in Rock County and across Wisconsin, near full employment, according to new jobs numbers released by the state of Wisconsin earlier this week.
Plant management at Cupertinos Edgerton facility told a 69蹤獲 reporter the company declines comment on its operations.
John Westphal leads Janesville-based, regional electrical contractor Westphal Electric. His company for years has employed workers contractors for hire who work at Cupertinos Edgerton plant, where they build modular electrical control rooms.
Westphal said he doesnt have knowledge of the dynamics of Cupertinos hiring for local corporate management roles in the data center sphere. Westphals contract employees provide the labor to build the electrical systems Cupertino designs.
Cupertino is part of a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that is a major player in data center and other IT construction projects, alongside its partner company, Texas-based electrical contracting giant Quanta Services.
Westphal said not all the systems his workers build at Cupertino are for data centers at the Edgerton plant, although some are. He said some of the finished, modular rooms are shipped to data center projects all over the U.S., not just used at regional projects like Metas $1-billion, hyperscale data center being built in Beaver Dam.
It could be local, but the stuff were building now is for a number of mission-critical data center sites, Westphal said. It could be because they have mission-critical jobs here (in Wisconsin), or maybe its in Virgina, or somewhere else. Its a competitive space.
Cupertinos work in Edgerton has breathed life into a plant space that had sat years with very little use.
Cupertino opened its Edgerton location in 2018, but only recently began listing data center positions in the area.
The Edgerton location at 1220 W. Fulton St. leases the space from Phoenix Investors LLC based out of Milwaukee. The companys primary project types include housing engineering and procurement, pre-fabrication and data center electrical design and construction.
The Dana Corporation, an automotive parts manufacturing company operated in the building until 1980. Designated Spicer Axle Division, the plant primarily supplied axles for truck and American Motors Corporation vehicles.
In the late 20th century, the building was subsequently used by Dorsey Trailers, a commercial trucking manufacturing company and later by Caterpillar, an engineering and construction equipment company. In 1985 Caterpillar closed the Edgerton plant in a cost-saving effort to cut the companys manufacturing expansion in the Midwest.
The building sat mostly vacant for more than 30 years until Phoenix Investors bought the 850,000-square-foot facility in 2016.
Cupertino Electric began leasing manufacturing space from Phoenix in 2018.
Cupertino also holds office locations in San Francisco, California, Santa Fe Springs, California, Mesa, Arizona, Urbandale, Iowa and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Tricia Braun is executive director of Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, a trade group that functions as a consortium and network for Wisconsin companies who work industries that are involved in the data center construction supply chain.
The Data Center Coalition recently published on its website an . It allows industries, developers or anyone from the public to click on different parts of the illustration that show physical aspects of a data center project.
Click on a piece it could be an image of a power line pylon or a bank of power generators inside the illustrated data center building and it pulls up a listing of dozens of Wisconsin manufacturers who now bid for contracts to serve the regional and national supply chain for data center projects.
The interactive map is one way Brauns group is trying to show the manufacturing sector, and the broader world, the economic growth impact of data center development as it plays out in Wisconsin.
Plants like Cupertino might employ hundreds of people who work to supply data centers with products, equipment or planning. Even though they may never set foot on a data center, the workers cash a paycheck sometimes a six-figure one thats tied to an industry now seeing enormous growth.
Construction work at data center sites can provide contractors work for several years, sometimes more but manufacturing for equipment that would need ongoing replacement and upgrades could become a much more permanent part of the economy.
I would say the opportunity that no one talks about is that there are different jobs that are directly attributed to data center (development). The ripple effects are really immeasurable, Braun said. The ecosystem for this industry in terms of job creation and quality jobs, its unprecedented.