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Apple is actively advertising for help with the design and construction of its “next generation” data centers as it begins work on a new computing facility in Prineville, Oregon and expands its iCloud data center in Maiden, North Carolina.
“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,” reads a new Apple job listing.
“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.”
The listing provides a small window onto Apple’s plans for data center expansion. The company is typically tight-lipped about most of its operation, and this is certainly true of the data center plans. Most of the big name web companies are similar tight-lipped — though Facebook has gone against the grain, actively sharing not only its practices but its actually designs with the rest of the world. The irony is that Apple may be interested in using the designs for Facebook’s Prineville data center, which the social networking giants has “open sourced” to the rest of the world.
As reported by The Oregonian , the company has now started work on the land it purchased in Prineville, right across the street from the data center Facebook opened there early last year.
In February, Prineville city engineer Eric Klann told Wired that according to the land-use application for the property Apple purchased, development was set to begin with eight modular data center units built by the San Jose-based outfit NxGen Modular. But then, Klann said, the plan was to build a larger facility “similar” to Facebook’s design.
According to The Oregonian Apple has started work on a modest 10,000-square-foot facility on 160-acre property, which it purchased from Crook County, Oregon for $5.6 million. “It’s just kind of a first phase that they’ve thrown together to get things started on the ground,” Prineville city planner Josh Smith told The Oregonian.
“It’s just a small, initial phase…I assume they’ll build something larger.”
Facebook’s facility across the street is a measures 330,000-square-feet, and the social giant is building a second facility right next to the first.
Meanwhile, in Maiden, North Carolina, Apple has begun construction on a large solar array to power portions of the data center it opened there last year.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its new job listing or future data center plans.
