Long relegated to the dungeons of the IT world, hidden in dark rooms and tinkering with facility equipment, the data center facility manager is now becoming more wanted, and harder-to-find.

As the New York Times puts in its article, data center facility managers were often thought of as “blue-collar workers in the high-tech world.” Really, though, that hasn’t changed much. There is much of that blue-collar attitude among data center facility managers that often comes from their penchant for tinkering. That’s why many of them became engineers in the first place, because they like tinkering.

But now those engineering skills, combined with the ability to understand information technology, has become a much-vaunted skill set that isn’t always easy to find. The article quotes Chris Crosby, a senior VP at Digital Realty Trust, as saying that it takes the data center real estate company eight months to find a suitable data center manager. It’s not easy.

The story also mentions that the lucky ones with these skills now have the supply-and-demand equation on their side. Supply is low, demand is high. And so they can command six-figure salaries easily, as well as five-figure signing bonuses and other perks, according to the article.

Hmm, maybe I should start taking some engineering classes at night. Just kidding. Kidding that I’m kidding, that is.