Construction already under way on Oregon site

Apple is advertising a new job listing which could be connected to a new data center in Prineville, Oregon, Wired reports. The company is hiring a data center construction project manager, who will nominally be based out of Cupertino, California, but have to travel to a project site. "As Apple’s new products and services expand and grow, so too does the need for more servers and server space to house them, Data Centers," the listing reads. "The candidate selected for this position will become an important part of the Apple team responsible for the design and construction implementation of the next generation of data centers.

"They will be expected to participating in meetings as the project develops from the conceptual phase into design development, and then up and through issued for construction. Once the project is fully designed, the candidate will lead the management efforts of the construction phase to insure the project is built per the project requirement."

The Oregonian reports that Apple recently started construction work on land it bought in Prineville for $5.6 million. Initial plans are said to involve a facility measuring just 10,000 square feet, but Apple has 160 acres to work with, and Prineville city planner Josh Smith suggests the company will likely build something larger. "It’s just kind of a first phase that they’ve thrown together to get things started on the ground," he says. "It’s just a small, initial phase...I assume they’ll build something larger."

Apple's land is across the street from a Facebook data center spanning 330,000 square feet, which will soon be joined by a second adjacent Facebook complex. The Apple center could in theory be based on Facebook's data center design, since the latter company has decided to open-source it. In February Prineville city engineer Eric Klann stated that based on Apple's land-use application, Apple would be building eight modular data center units with the help of NxGen Modular. Afterward, according to Klann, the idea was to construct a larger facility "similar" to Facebook's.

The new job could also be related to Apple's existing data center in Maiden, North Carolina, which Apple is in the middle of expanding. The company is at least building out solar and fuel cell arrays, but might also be at work on a complementary "tactical" data center.

by MacNN Staff