DCD Connect MENA 2026

Gemma O'Flaherty and Ahmed Jamal Khan from our Dubai office attended DCD Connect MENA and spoke with operators, developers, contractors and vendors. What was apparent is that while hiring is quieter than in previous years, the opportunities haven’t gone anywhere. Saudi Arabia is the market everyone wants to talk about.

The market in numbers

Whatever the hiring mood, the money keeps coming. Knight Frank expects the combined Saudi and UAE data centre market to more than triple in two years.

What the industry was talking about

1. AI drives everything. Almost every session came back to AI workloads and what they demand from a building. 
2. Power is the bottleneck, but not for the reason you'd think. Electricity and water are not expensive in the region. Supply isn't really the problem either. The hard part is getting approvals. Companies are spending a lot of energy working out how to secure power allocations faster, and the ones who can navigate that process have a real edge.
3. Speed wins. How fast you can get a data centre built and live matters more than ever. Several companies are now selling their local supply chains as a USP, because it shortens lead times and reduces exposure to delays elsewhere.
4. The big names are still European and American. The industry here is heavily dominated by US and European brands. That's starting to shift as regional players grow, but for now the international operators and vendors set the tone.
5. More partnership, less rivalry. One thing Gemma and Ahmed both picked up on was how collaborative the conversations were. Companies are working together far more than competing head-to-head.
6. Real estate is moving in. Property developers are investing heavily in data centres, with modular colocation a popular route in. It lets them get capacity to market quickly without building a hyperscale campus from scratch.

What it means for hiring

Recruitment is quieter than last year. Businesses are taking more time over decisions. But there are plenty of live opportunities, and Saudi Arabia is comfortably the number one market for hiring right now.

Two things came up again and again.

• Your network is part of the job. Clients want people who are well connected. In a market where approvals, partnerships and power allocations make or break a project, who you know carries real weight. A strong candidate with the right relationships is worth waiting for.
• Techno-commercial is the profile everyone wants. The traditional salesperson is being replaced by someone with genuine technical knowledge who can sell. It works the other way too. Clients want their engineers and technical leads to think commercially and be comfortable in front of customers. People who sit across both sides are hard to find, and they know it.

Emiratisation: a need and a want

Emiratisation is a requirement, but the companies Gemma and Ahmed spoke to want it as well. They're not hiring Emiratis just to hit a quota. They want UAE nationals to be a genuine part of the business, building careers and taking on real responsibility.

The pressure is real. Private companies with 50 or more staff had to reach 9% Emirati representation in skilled roles by June 2026, rising to 10% by year end. More than 190,000 Emiratis now work across 32,000 private companies, and 95% of mandated firms hit their first-half target. The strategy has also been extended to 2040, so this isn't going away (The National).

For data centre businesses the challenge is finding Emirati talent with the technical depth the sector needs. Discover more about our Emiratisation recruitment service.