Briscoe County is about to have a data center hiring problem. Soluna Holdings has acquired 397 acres near Silverton, Texas for Project Dorothy 3, an AI and high-performance computing campus with potential capacity of up to 300 MW. The site sits adjacent to Soluna's existing Dorothy 1 and Dorothy 2 projects, which together host approximately 98 MW of renewable computing, and directly across from the substation serving Soluna's company-owned 150 MW Briscoe Wind Farm. The talent required to build and operate this campus is not sitting idle in the Texas Panhandle.

Source: ZipRecruiter / dcgeeks 2026 salary data

For commissioning engineers, look for documented CxA or BCxP credentials alongside hands-on generator, UPS, and switchgear experience. AI and HPC workloads add a layer: candidates who have commissioned high-density deployments, not just standard enterprise builds, will ramp faster on a campus of this type. For critical-facilities engineers and technicians, OSHA 30 and NFPA 70E are baseline. CDCP or CDCE credentials signal commitment to the discipline. On a co-located renewable campus, high-voltage switching experience and familiarity with wind-farm substation environments are a genuine differentiator rather than a nice-to-have. For trades during construction, IBEW journeyman cards and documented high-voltage experience matter most. Fiber and controls experience becomes critical as the campus matures, and candidates who have worked on ERCOT-connected infrastructure understand the regulatory environment from day one.

Commissioning roles are almost always contract-to-permanent or direct contract with a defined project term. Budget for per diem and travel if the candidate is not relocating, and set clear expectations about on-site requirements during commissioning phases when remote work is not an option. Permanent operations roles require a real relocation package. Operators who genuinely move to Silverton or the surrounding area will want a signing bonus, relocation reimbursement, and a retention clause that makes the math work for at least two years. Without that structure, you will lose candidates to competing offers in Lubbock, Amarillo, or the Dallas-Fort Worth market before their first anniversary. For trades, prevailing wage benchmarks for the Lubbock-area market are the right starting point. Expect to layer in travel pay and per diem for anyone commuting from more than 60 miles out, which will be most of the skilled workforce on this build.

Commissioning engineers come from a national pool. The candidates with the right HPC and renewable co-location background are working on projects in Northern Virginia, Phoenix, the Pacific Northwest, and Texas metros. They are not found through local job boards. Critical-facilities engineers and technicians with relevant backgrounds tend to cluster around existing data center markets. Texas has a real talent pool, but it is concentrated in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Sourcing for a Silverton-based role means pulling candidates who are open to rural Texas or who already have a connection to the region. Construction trades draw from Lubbock, Amarillo, and the broader Panhandle. The Lubbock market has institutional and commercial construction experience and a history with power infrastructure projects. Contractors who have worked on Panhandle wind farms are the most immediately useful, because they understand the terrain, the substation environment, and ERCOT.

This is the non-obvious insight for Briscoe County: Soluna is not building an isolated facility in an empty field. Dorothy 3 sits next to two operating renewable computing projects and directly across from a 150 MW wind farm that the company now owns. That co-location of campus, wind generation, and substation in a single rural location creates a self-contained industrial cluster that does not exist anywhere else in the Texas Panhandle. The practical consequence for staffing is that there is already a small but real population of high-voltage electricians, controls technicians, and wind-energy operations personnel who have worked on Briscoe Wind Farm or the Dorothy 1 and 2 assets. Those workers know the site, the substation configuration, and the ERCOT interconnection. They are the most efficient conversion path into long-term data center infrastructure roles. The problem is retention. Panhandle wind and transmission projects pull from the same pool, and those workers will follow the next contract if Soluna does not build a case for the Dorothy campus as a long-term career environment rather than a one-off project job. The hiring strategy has to treat those wind-energy converts as the nucleus of a permanent operations team, not as temporary labor to be cycled through.

Project Dorothy 3 closed its land acquisition on August 24, 2026. As of now the project is in planning and technical development, with master planning, environmental and water work, ERCOT integration, and fiber studies underway. No construction start date or first-power date is on public record.

When construction does start, trades sourcing needs to be active at least 60 days ahead of the mobilization date. Commissioning talent should be in conversation 90 days before the first energization milestone. Permanent operations hiring should overlap with commissioning so that institutional knowledge transfers before contract engineers roll off.

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. For Dorothy 3, that means we know which candidates have renewable co-location experience and which ones have worked in rural Texas environments where relocation is a real part of the conversation. If Silverton is on your board, send us the roles and we start now.

For the buildout, see Soluna's Briscoe County data center filing. Comp sources: ZipRecruiter and dcgeeks 2026 salary data.