Singtel’s Nxera and industry partners to hire and train over 500 people for data centre roles 

[SINGAPORE] Singtel’s data centre arm, Nxera, and its industry partners aim to train and hire over 500 people in data centre-related and digital roles, amid a weakening tech employment landscape in Singapore.

Along with its partners – which include data centre design and consultancy firms, automation specialists, and equipment suppliers – the group is looking to hire fresh graduates and mid-career professionals across technical and non-technical functions, such as consultancy, design and engineering.

It also aims to recruit sustainability talent through internships, graduate programmes, work-study and full-time roles.

A tech background is not required to be part of the data centre industry, said Bill Chang, chief executive officer of Nxera and Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, at a career fair held in ITE College East on Friday (Jul 25).

Of the available roles, approximately half will be engineering-related, while the rest will comprise non-technical roles such as product and financial management, he said. Singtel aims to fill these roles over the next six months.

The career fair comes as Singapore aims to expand data centre capacity by more than one-third in the next few years, creating an urgent need to address the ongoing talent crunch in the data centre industry, said Nxera.

There were 5,422 engineering sciences graduates across all polytechnics in 2023, according to the latest Ministry of Education (MOE) Education Statistics Digest released in November 2024.

Recently, there has been increasing unemployment among tech fresh graduates, as indicated by the Ministry of Education’s Graduate Employment Survey 2024. For instance, full-time permanent employment for engineering graduates from Singapore’s autonomous universities fell from 82.9 per cent in 2023 to 79.3 per cent in 2024.

Acknowledging these trends, Chang believes that Nxera and its partners’ aggressive hiring strategy will channel fresh graduate talent into the data centre industry.

“With the growth in digital infrastructure outstripping the pace at which new people are joining the industry, we’ve made it a priority to tackle this talent gap together with our industry partners,” he said.

Chang added that Nxera aims to nurture a skilled workforce to build a strong digital core and scale up AI capabilities to strengthen Singapore’s role as a regional leader and hub in the global digital economy.

Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Tan Kiat How, who was the guest-of-honour at the event, highlighted the government’s own initiatives to support better employment outcomes for students, including the TechSkills Accelerator for ITE and the Polytechnics Alliance.

Since 2022, these initiatives have secured over 1,000 tech jobs for ITE and polytechnic graduates, with more than 1,300 students completing year-long internships, he said.

Asia expansion

Nxera also said that it “is accelerating its expansion plans with the development of several artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in the Asia region”.

The group’s third 58-megawatt (MW) data centre is slated to open in Tuas in 2026, with Singtel securing S$643 million in green loans to develop the Tuas data centre. This will be Singtel’s largest data centre in Singapore, and one of the largest liquid-cooled AI data centres in Asia.

Nxera’s 64 MW data centre in Johor is expected to begin its first phase next year. It can be scaled up to 200 MW in response to market demand, when all phases are built.

The group began operations for its 25 MW data centre in Thailand last month. Its data centre in Batam, which supports an approximate load of 20 MW, is slated to begin operations next year.

Shares of Singtel closed down 1.2 per cent, or S$0.05, at S$4.09 on Friday.