Project Star is a more than $22 billion energy-infrastructure and data-center campus announced September 30, 2026, in Encinal, La Salle County, Texas. NextEra Energy Resources and Related Companies intend to jointly develop, construct, and operate approximately 6,472 megawatts of natural-gas-fired combined-cycle generation. Lewis Energy Group is providing the land, produced-water infrastructure, and Texas natural-gas supply. Related Digital is developing an adjacent 5-gigawatt data-center campus. The talent this project needs is not sitting idle in La Salle County.

Remote, rural locations with no established data-center ecosystem routinely require a location premium of 10 to 20 percent above these baselines to attract candidates who are giving up proximity to an established tech corridor.

For commissioning engineers: an electrical or mechanical engineering degree or equivalent trade background, NFPA 70E, and hands-on experience commissioning medium-voltage switchgear, UPS systems, generators, and cooling infrastructure at hyperscale or colocation facilities. BICSI RCDD and Uptime Institute AOS credentials are valued but secondary to verified commissioning hours on similar power densities. For critical-facilities engineers and technicians: OSHA 30, a working knowledge of DCIM platforms, and demonstrated competency in lockout/tagout procedures for live data-center environments. On the generation side, power-plant operators with combined-cycle experience and a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality air-quality background will be competitive.

Relocation. For commissioning roles, budget a full relocation package. Encinal is 55 miles from Laredo and roughly 100 miles from San Antonio. Candidates relocating from Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, or the coasts need cash, time, and confidence that the role is permanent before they move a family. Per diem and housing. Many commissioning and construction-phase roles will be staffed by traveling workers on rotating schedules. A competitive per diem, company-arranged or company-subsidized housing in Laredo or along I-35, and clear travel reimbursement terms are table-stakes for attracting the national pool. Contract versus permanent. Commissioning is almost always contract or contract-to-hire. Operations roles should be structured as direct hires from day one; offering a long-term employment path, not just a project engagement, is the main retention lever available in a location with no surrounding data-center ecosystem to catch a candidate who decides to leave. Timeline alignment. Initial generating resources are anticipated as early as 2029. That means commissioning staff need to be identified and contracted well before the generation plant is ready to energize. Waiting until construction is 80 percent complete is too late.

Commissioning engineers come from the national pool of professionals currently working hyperscale buildouts in Northern Virginia, Phoenix, Dallas, and Chicago. They are not responding to job postings; they are approached directly. Critical-facilities engineers are sourced from operating colocation and hyperscale facilities. Many are locked into non-solicitation windows, which means timing and relationship access matter more than job-board reach. Critical-facilities technicians can be sourced regionally from San Antonio's commercial and industrial facilities, but hyperscale-specific experience is thin there. Entry-level technicians with military electrical or HVAC backgrounds from Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston are an underutilized pipeline. Construction trades are accessible through IBEW and UA contractors operating in San Antonio, Laredo, and the Eagle Ford corridor, supplemented by national labor brokers for peak demand.

This is the non-obvious staffing challenge: La Salle County has a genuine industrial workforce shaped by Lewis Energy Group's oil-and-gas operations and the broader Eagle Ford basin. Workers here know large-scale field electrical, mechanical systems, produced-water handling, and high-pressure pipework. That experience is directly useful for the generation plant's balance-of-plant construction and for some MEP work on the data-center campus.

What does not exist in this labor market is hyperscale data-center commissioning expertise, DCIM operations experience, or the semiconductor-facility-style electrical discipline required to run a 5-gigawatt campus at tier-level availability. There is no former data-center campus in Encinal or La Salle County to draw from. There is no nearby colocation hub. The closest analogues are in San Antonio, and that market is not deep. This project will need to import and house a significant share of its commissioning and operations talent, and the housing, per-diem, and retention structures need to be designed for that reality before the first commissioning engineer is asked to sign an offer.

Project Star was announced in September 2026 with initial generation anticipated as early as 2029 and permitting still required. That is a compressed window for a project at this scale. Construction trades need to be engaged as permitting advances. Commissioning engineers who will be needed in 2028 or 2029 are being recruited by competing projects today. Operations leaders who will run the campus for the following decade need to be hired early enough to participate in commissioning and understand the specific infrastructure they will own.

The hiring plan is not something to build when shovels are in the ground. It is something to build now.

NextDCX recruits for your toughest data center roles. Share the work, location, and experience your team needs. We run a fresh search for every role, approach people directly, and speak with every candidate before introducing them. You get people screened for the work, pay, location, and availability, ready to meet your hiring team. We also support recruiting partners. If Project Star is on your board, send us the roles and we start now. For the full buildout overview, see Related Digital's Project Star campus filing.

Comp sources: ZipRecruiter and dcgeeks 2026 salary data.