West of Warsaw is one of the areas that Poland’s data-centre growth is becoming ever more visible. There are substations there, contractors are there, and so are the local residents who are more frequently being taken into consideration. Microsoft operates in the greater Warsaw area, in the Raszyn and Pruszków belt. DATA4 has opened a second building at Jawczyce, in the municipality of Ożarów Mazowiecki. Equinix and Atman are already recruiting facilities staff in the same region. Any new data centres being planned are going to be joining a queue.
Why data centre builds are concentrating west of Warsaw
A campus on the scale Switch has permitted at Mory, 90 MW of power and 60 MW of IT load, does not fit in a business district. It needs a grid connection, a plot measured in hectares, and a road that can take transformers. Ożarów Mazowiecki has already accepted one campus, at Jawczyce, and the mayor, Paweł Kanclerz, has thanked DATA4 in public for supporting the development of infrastructure in the village and support for the local emergency services. Ożarów Mazowiecki is the municipality Switch Datacenters has chosen. The land and the permits at Mory are in the same gmina as Jawczyce, a short drive apart.
The centre of Warsaw still holds many of the older colocation buildings. Today companies are looking at the wider ring around the city, where the power and the land are. Verita HR’s own scan of the market put the current hiring in that belt, from the western industrial edge through to Piaseczno and Blonie.
How many megawatts Poland has, and what Switch adds at Mory
Compute, in the data centre market, is counted in megawatts, not in servers. Poland does not publish a figure for how many calculations the country performs, but CBRE puts operating capacity at about 200 MW now, and at about 500 MW by 2030. There is no published data that says how many of those 200 MW are located west of Warsaw. Andrzej Domański, the finance minister, said at the Jawczyce opening in April that Poland already accounts for more than a third of data-centre capacity in Central and Eastern Europe. Adam Ponichtera, who runs DATA4 in Poland, said at the same opening that the company was building in close cooperation with the local community in Ożarów Mazowiecki.
Switch has land and permits at Mory for a first phase of 60 MW of IT load and 90 MW of power. Gregor Snip, the founder, said on July 31, 2025, that this was the company’s first site outside the Netherlands, with construction then due in early 2026 and the first phase due to be operational in early 2027.
Set against today’s national figure, 60 MW is close to a third of the capacity Poland already has switched on. Snip added that “Poland’s strategic location, robust digital economy, growing demand for advanced data solutions, and willingness to develop more sustainably make it an ideal market for our next-generation facilities.”
The design Switch has announced is dry cooling, with no continuous water use. Sixty megawatts may not sound large next to a 3 GW plan that is in process on the Baltic coast, but it will still be a challenge to get everything in place for the new data centre.
What a data centre facilities job involves
Facilities staff take the power from the intake to the UPS and the generator, and they keep a redundant path so a failure does not drop the load. They take the heat out, whether the plant is a chiller, a dry cooler or, on Switch’s drawing, a system that does not draw water all day. They run the building-management system, answer the alarm at 3am, and hand the building over when it can take load. A standing crew on a live site is small. Microsoft’s report on its Polish datacentres puts the operating headcount of its combined operational datacentre workforce around Warsaw at about 60. The most important facilities staff are the handful who can commission the plant on time.
Rzeczpospolita reported on September 28 that the roles operators are struggling to fill are electricians, power engineers, automation technicians, mechanics and cooling specialists. Equinix, in that story, put the global requirement at about 300,000 extra technicians and 150,000 power and cooling engineers by 2030. That global figure gives a lot of context, but it does not specify the exact challenge in the case of Poland. Verita HR’s report about the Warsaw market put mechanical and HVAC engineers among the most needed skills, next to electrical technicians and facilities engineers.
Data centre protests west of Warsaw: Piaseczno, Dobre and Reguły
On September 16 residents stood at a fence on Energetyczna in Piaseczno and chanted “Data centre? Not here.” Przegląd Piaseczyński reported that local residents found out about the new data centre when the hoarding went up, there was no public information released about it earlier. The objections were water, noise, power and the proximity of the centre to nearby houses. A week earlier, councillors in Dobre voted unanimously to take a 90-hectare proposal at Nowa Wieś out of the municipal plan, after more than 200 residents from four villages signed a petition against it. At Reguły and Michałowice, the investor moved the buildings back from the houses and promised a green belt only after protests took place. In Kajetany the objection is sharper still: residents say the mayor waived a full environmental assessment and that there was no public consultation.
Mory is not mentioned in any of these reports. The drive from Mory to Piaseczno is half an hour.
Switch has said the Mory plant will not draw water continuously. Water was one of the fears Piaseczno residents were vocal about, and it was the fear at Reguły too. The other was noise, and the distance to houses.
How Microsoft and DATA4 talk to residents
In May 2026 Microsoft held an event in Raszyn for the first round of its Community Fund, run with ChangeX, and launched a second round. The money it put aside backs libraries, digital skills and a nature picnic around the Raszyńskie Ponds. Piotr Bralski, Microsoft’s datacentre director in Poland, said the company’s presence should benefit residents.
DATA4 is the closer comparison to Switch’s case, because Jawczyce is in the same gmina as Mory. Ponichtera said in April that the company was building “with a responsible environmental approach and close cooperation with the local community in the municipality of Ożarów Mazowiecki.” The mayor, Paweł Kanclerz, said that cooperation produces concrete actions for residents, including infrastructure in Jawczyce and support for the emergency services.
Hiring data centre staff in Poland: contracts, SEP and payroll
A foreign operator staffing Mory is also going to have to face Polish employment law. In Poland, an employment contract and a B2B invoice are taxed differently, shift premiums sit outside the base, and a facilities technician needs an SEP certificate before he can start the job. A Warsaw HVAC technician and a Warsaw data-centre technician sit in the same band, around 120,000 to 140,000 zloty.
The team at Verita HR can hire the facilities staff for a campus west of Warsaw, and can show a Dutch or American employer how that payroll works before any problems might arise. Some of the engineers already work for Verita HR group clients.
