Malaysia's data centre boom is paying up to RM30,000 a month
High salaries, rising scrutiny, and a push towards sustainability.
As data centre demand takes off, how is it lifting pay in Malaysia? According to Digital Minister Gobind, senior roles can pay up to RM30,000 a month.
He was citing data from Bank Negara Malaysia's "From Bytes to Bucks: The Economics of Data Centres in Malaysia, Q3 2025" report (pdf). It had me thinking.
Highly paid
Gobind was responding to questions in the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of Malaysia's Parliament, about whether the industry merely benefited from the country's relatively affordable water and electricity.
He pointed instead to how Malaysia's data centre boom has created high-skilled jobs such as network engineers, cloud architects, and data scientists. Entry-level positions could offer salaries ranging from RM3,000 to RM7,000 (US$1,700), while senior roles can command between RM10,000 and RM30,000 a month (US$7,300).
For comparison, Malaysia's median monthly salary was RM2,793 (US$600) in 2024.
Changing winds
As the world rushes to fulfil surging demand for data centres, the winds of public opinion are gradually changing in the face of increasingly massive digital infrastructure.
Ironically, larger data centres are often much more energy efficient to operate, which means they offer more compute for the energy they consume. Even so, the sheer energy consumption of these modern facilities has caused anxiety in some communities.
It didn't help that operators in some countries have skirted laws or exploited loopholes to run noisy and polluting power plants within data centre compounds.
Growing scrutiny
While this hasn't happened in Malaysia, the government earlier set up a Data Centre Task Force (DCTF) for national-level coordination and assessment of data centre developments.
Data centres are also being put under increasing scrutiny. Today, developments are subject to the data centre planning guidelines (pdf) prepared by PLANMalaysia. In a nutshell, it has become a lot harder to build data centres in Malaysia. In several cases I know of, developments have been pushed back or delayed.
Sustainable deployments
Ultimately, data centre operators would do well to focus more on sustainability. In practice, that means the use of renewable energy, high-efficiency cooling, and alternative water resources.
Digital infrastructure is increasingly woven into our daily lives. The only real question is how to deploy it as sustainably as possible.
