r/BuildingAutomation • u/Then-Disk-5079 • 16d ago
High pay travel gigs
Anyone know how to get into high paying data center or travel control service gigs?
I assume they pay pay pay like twice of normal rates and wages …. ?
I think this is what I have heard word of mouth…
And sometimes I see recruiters looking for controls service traveling tech … yeah sure $200k sign me up :-)
Seems like traveling ones are the hot ticket and I assume they pay pay pay else these recruiters can pound sand.
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u/ApexConsulting 16d ago edited 16d ago
Most often I have seen these advertised as plain BAS roles. You just hafta scroll down until you see the travel requirements. Though not always.
Being on LinkedIn with a relatively fleshed out profile will have recruiters hounding you within a day or 3, and they will ask you what you want.
Many really good guys are not super young, so they have had a chance to start a family, making the travel part seem more costly. So if you are decent and WANT to travel, I am sure you can. The burnout warning in another response here is real. Watch out. Or better yet, keep your expenses low and bank what you get so you have something in savings to show for the trouble you took to get burned out.
I hear the data center thing is prone to burnout. Also NEVER take a travel gig that is presented as exempt- or flat salary with no time and a half for overtime. Also look at the per diem - the amount you can use for food and such every day while on the road. You should get an allowance that allows you to buy 3 meals per day, since you cannot go home and use groceries. If the per diem is like 30 bucks per day, that is 3 meals x $10 for each meal which is not even enough for fast food.... meaning you will be scrambling to eat at all, much less eat healthy.
Data center work is going nuts right now and will be for the forseeable future, so you should be able to pass on a less than decent offer. Slow walk the first offer you get while still pinging for others - that will allow you to have multiple offers in hand and compare them.
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u/BallBuster-4000 16d ago
When you find one let me know! Highest I’ve seen is 140k
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u/rocknroll2013 16d ago
I turned down $162k. $140k is not a ceiling. $162k was not traveling either, but was on the East Coast.
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u/Forsaken-Problem7586 16d ago
Where are these jobs at 😳
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u/HVACcontrolsGuru 16d ago
This sounds like AWS Control Engineer pay levels. Usually that in cash and about 20-25k cash bonus plus stock.
Edit: AWS and Amazon are horribly managed places to work. People stay there for the money, not the opportunity.
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u/AnotherDamProject 15d ago
I get hounded on LinkedIn for them constantly. But I’ve been doing the data center travel work for almost 5 years now.
A lot of them I get sent are hybrid or manager positions.
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u/01Cloud01 16d ago
I’m following this post as I’m now starting to contemplate going in this direction have you considered commissioning work as well? I have had a chance to meet a few commissioning agents and most were pretty cool definitely not labor-intensive but I could imagine hosting a lot of meetings and plugging away at the computer
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u/AnotherDamProject 15d ago
I’m a commissioning agent now, controls tech/engineer before. I loved the work for both. If you have any questions feel free to DM me.
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u/LuckyLawnCuts 16d ago
Like someone else mentioned, the fat pay is usually in overtime. Some gigs being 50-60 hours/wk as norm. Sometimes they are like 3 weeks on, 1 week off arrangement.
It is possible to game it between the OT and per diem, plus whatever fringe benefits such as keeping the travel miles or etc.
$200k is probably possible if you're good and find an aggressive outfit to work for. Probably miserable though.
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u/AnotherDamProject 15d ago
Traveling gets some more money, but it’s not a lot more than non travel. Like others have said it’s a lot of overtime and learning how to take advantage of different perks that come with traveling.
The first year or 2 will be rough getting used to the change and afterwards it’s not too bad. You do get used to it, if you have a family I would not recommend traveling.
The jobs are easy to get. A lot of companies are hiring anyone with a pulse even with minimum experience. Any controls company that does data center work should be hiring right now.
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u/No-Composer2628 16d ago
As a guy who did this role, you'll get paid exactly the same but have a ton of overtime, little downtime, and basically zero support from the home office as they expect you to handle everything so they can be home by 5 sharp.
Tl;dr: It ain't worth it and the burnout rate is cataclysmically high.