Stack's 1GW Stafford Technology Campus and Northern Virginia data center hiring

Stack announced the campus in a January 2025 press release. The Peterson Companies, the site's previous owner, won the rezoning in September 2024.

• ●Developer: Stack Infrastructure, which operates and develops 10 Northern Virginia campuses totaling more than 2.4GW
• ●Site: about 500 acres on the east side of US Route 1 at I-95, in the Falmouth area of Stafford County, across from Stafford Regional Airport
• ●Size: more than 1GW across up to 19 data centers in four sub-campuses
• ●Power: six 300MW substations supplied by Dominion Energy
• ●Cooling water: a reclaimed water system, known as purple pipe, so the campus does not draw on the county's drinking water
• ●Approvals: Stafford County supervisors approved a comprehensive plan amendment and rezoning for up to 23 buildings, 5.8 million sq ft and six substations
• ●Progress: in just over a year on the first building, project teams logged more than 425,000 hours, moved about three million cubic yards of earth and built 4,000 feet of retaining walls
• ●Jobs: Stack expects over 1,000 construction jobs at peak and hundreds of full-time jobs
• ●Dates: Peterson's earlier plan, reported by DatacenterDynamics, had the first phase live in 2027, and Baxtel's project listing shows phases running through 2036. Stack has not confirmed either date.
• ●Not announced yet: the tenant and the general contractor

Stack has not published a schedule for the later buildings. Campuses like this hire in a set order, and each search should be open before the milestone it depends on.

• ●Owner's team and design: owner's project managers and electrical and mechanical design leads, before design starts on each sub-campus
• ●Commissioning agent: hired during design, so it can review drawings and equipment submittals before anything is installed
• ●Construction: superintendents, MEP coordinators and managers, electrical superintendents for the substation and switchgear work, project controls and BIM/VDC coordinators, hired by the general contractor before it starts on site
• ●Commissioning: commissioning engineers, controls engineers and startup technicians before Level 3 testing
• ●Operations: chief engineers, critical facilities engineers and critical environment technicians during construction, so they watch Level 4 and Level 5 testing before they take over

The first building has topped out, so its commissioning and operations hiring comes next. With up to 19 data centers planned, the same hiring will repeat building by building for several years.

EdgeCore announced in July 2024 that it bought 120 acres in Culpeper for a 1.4 million sq ft campus of 216MW to start, with room for 432MW. It expects power from Rappahannock Electric Cooperative in early 2028.

In Bristow, Amazon Data Services bought about 70% of the 270-acre Devlin Technology Park from Stanley Martin for $700 million in November 2025. The site is zoned for up to 3.5 million sq ft and three substations, and no construction has been reported there yet.

Stafford is at the south end of the market, so someone working in Ashburn is unlikely to want a daily drive there. The closest pool is Stafford, Spotsylvania and southern Prince William counties and Fredericksburg.

• ●Compare your commissioning and testing dates with Stafford's next buildings, and line up your commissioning people early if they overlap.
• ●Search by drive time to your site. For Stafford, start with Fredericksburg and the I-95 corridor before Loudoun County.
• ●Consider people from utilities, military facilities maintenance and industrial controls, with a planned first 90 days of training.
• ●Check your pay range against current commissioning pay before you post the role.

• ●With up to 19 buildings planned in Stafford, commissioning, controls and critical facilities work there should run for several years.
• ●Ask any employer when the site will be energized, since that date sets when commissioning work peaks.