I'm on the tools
Add your tickets and experience. Get your Poachd rank out of 100, then claim it on your private Passport.
Rank my capabilityFree for technical people
The technical peopleeveryone is fighting for.
Capability is the differentiator. Poachd is where skilled technical people put what they can actually do on a Passport, and where employers and projects come to find that capability before anyone else does.
I'm staffing a project
Search scarce technical Passports, unlock the right people and make a private approach.
Find technical peopleLimited discovery is free
No account, no CV, no sales call. Already on Poachd? Sign in.
Hyperscale data hallsData centre electriciansUPS & switchgearHV switching & protectionCommissioning & ISTBusway & containmentGenerator synchronisationBattery energy storageLiquid cooling & cooling systemsSCADA / BMS / PLCHyperscale data hallsData centre electriciansUPS & switchgearHV switching & protectionCommissioning & ISTBusway & containmentGenerator synchronisationBattery energy storageLiquid cooling & cooling systemsSCADA / BMS / PLC
How it works
Create a Passport. Get found. Choose who can approach.
01
Sign up in one tap
Continue with Google or Apple, or scan any trade licence or ticket - electrical, HV, instrumentation, mechanical, refrigeration, rigging, welding - and Poachd reads your details straight off the card.
02
Create your Poachd Passport
Add your trade, qualifications, tickets, project history, systems experience, location, mobility, availability and preferred work.
03
Employers find your Passport
You choose discoverability. Employers search private previews and pay to unlock the people whose evidence fits the work.
04
Get approached
An unlocked Passport opens a private approach. Your response and any successful move make the market more useful next time.
For data centre electricians
Your technical Passport, not another resume.
Create one private professional record of your tickets, project experience, systems knowledge, location, mobility and availability. You decide when companies can discover you.
- Show the specific technical work, systems and equipment you have actually delivered.
- See exactly what work pays before you show interest. No 'competitive salary'.
- Verify your evidence once, then carry the Passport throughout your career.
- Capability development pathways: which competency lifts your rate, and what it takes to get there.
DM
Dane M.
Brisbane, QLD · 11 yrs
Verified
94AI Skills
Score
Score
HV Switching 33kV
UPS & Static Switch
Data Centre Fitout
Busway
CBRE
- Rate
- $96/hr
- Available
- 2 wks
- Roster
- FIFO ok
For contractors
You're not just competing for projects. You're competing for the people who can deliver them.
The people you need are already out there. Poachd lets you search private technical Passports by evidence, location, availability and mobility — then pay to unlock and approach the right people.
Conventional recruitment
The same closed networks
Existing employees. Nominated project personnel. Known subcontractors. Previous projects. Workforce spreadsheets. Recruiters, referrals and industry networks. It works — until two programmes in the same market need the same people at the same time.
With Poachd
Search the people directly
Filter Passport evidence, preview matching people, unlock only those worth an approach, then track the conversation and outcome.
What that visibility looks like
Illustrative example · future capability
Project
Data Centre | Brisbane
Required capability
- Data Centre Electricians180 required
- HV Electricians30 required
- Electrical Supervisors18 required
- Commissioning Technicians12 required
- BMS Technicians10 required
Capability visibility
Available capability
- Data Centre Electricians143
- HV Electricians18
- Electrical Supervisors11
- Commissioning Technicians6
- BMS Technicians8
Illustrative example of the visibility the capability graph will provide once scaled — not live Poachd numbers.
Early access for contractors
Tell us what you're trying to staff and we'll show you how the graph would read for that crew.
Pricing
Technical people join free. Employers pay for access.
Employers can search limited previews without a card. Passport unlock packs start at $99, with outcome-aligned fees only after a successful poach starts work.
Tradespeople
Free
Always. You are never the product fee.
- Private technical Passport and Poachd Score
- Unlimited approaches and conversations
- Licence verification
- Career copilot and rate benchmarks
Employers · paid Passport access
$0 to join
Search limited previews free. Unlock full Passports only when you find someone worth approaching.
Step 1
Sign up free
Email or Google, one screen and no contract. Search limited Passport previews straight away.
Step 2
Unlock the right Passport
Buy a simple access pack, then use one credit to reveal a full Passport and make an approach.
Step 3
Track the poach
Keep the response, conversation and placement outcome together. Mobilisation fees apply only after a successful start.
What a hire actually costs
Contract sparkie
$96/hr, 50 hrs a week, 6 months on site
$3,931
$6 per hour worked - $288 a week
A trade agency at 15% would invoice $33,120 up front.
Permanent hire
$165k package, one-off fee
$9,900
Charged in small amounts across the first 6 months, not on day one
A trade agency at 15% would invoice $24,750 up front.
Walks away in the first 90 days? Unbilled charges are waived, and with the optional guarantee (+20% on the fee) we replace them at no charge.
The full fee schedule - rates, decay and minimums
Fee per hour worked, by pay rate
Up to $60/hr8.00%
$60 – $85/hr7.00%
$85 – $110/hr6.00%
$110 – $150/hr5.00%
$150+/hr4.25%
The rate drops as pay goes up, so premium HV and commissioning labour is not penalised.
The fee decays the longer they stay
100%
Weeks 1-13 - full rate
50%
Weeks 14-26 - half rate
25%
Week 27+ - quarter rate
Every active week carries a $55 per-worker minimum, so the fee never tails off to nothing on long build-outs.
Monthly minimum, only once you are mobilising
Nothing until your first worker is on the tools, and the first 2 months after that are free. After that a monthly minimum sized to the workforce you run through the graph, drawn down 100% by the hours you are already paying for - you only ever see an invoice for the shortfall.
$490/mo
Site
Up to 5 workers on fee
$1,450/mo
Program
Up to 25 workers on fee
$3,900/mo
Enterprise program
26+ workers on fee
Program-scale rollouts, intelligence API and SSO are scoped per build-out.
Talk to usAsset owner, developer or operator? Register your programme
Signals from the market
The people funding the build-out
are already naming the constraint.
We didn't invent the labour thesis. Asset managers, operators and the trades press have been saying it out loud - and the published numbers back it.
Warned that the United States may run out of electricians before it runs out of ambition - that the AI build-out is constrained by skilled labour, not just by grid capacity.
Larry Fink
Chairman & CEO, BlackRock
CERAWeek by S&P Global, Houston · reported by Fortune, March 2025
BlackRock committed US$100m to training electricians, HVAC technicians and plumbers specifically to serve data centre and critical infrastructure demand - capital moving to the labour layer, not just the asset layer.
BlackRock
Infrastructure Summit announcement
BlackRock Infrastructure Summit · reported by Data Centre Magazine, March 2026
Said data centre electricians under 30 are earning around US$260,000 without a degree, and are being poached like it is a draft in the major leagues.
Mike Rowe
Host, Dirty Jobs · founder, mikeroweWORKS
Broadcast interview · reported by Benzinga, April 2026
Criticised schools for treating the trades as a vocational consolation prize, having met data centre electricians earning up to US$280,000 a year.
Mike Rowe
Host, Dirty Jobs · founder, mikeroweWORKS
Interview · reported by Fortune, March 2026
349,000
Extra US construction workers needed in 2026
Associated Builders and Contractors' annual workforce model, on top of normal replacement hiring - after a 439,000 gap modelled for 2025.
Associated Builders and Contractors · 2026
1.4%
North American data centre vacancy
Supply grew 36% across 2025 and vacancy still fell to a record low. Capacity is absorbed faster than it can be energised.
CBRE · February 2026
64%
New capacity being built outside traditional hubs
Construction is moving into markets with no incumbent trade base - the exact condition where location-aware capability data decides the schedule.
JLL · February 2026
Top 3
Staffing ranks with equipment lead times as an operator constraint
Uptime Institute's 2025 staffing survey found the hiring crisis persisting into 2026 alongside manufacturer lead times.
Uptime Institute · December 2025
US$1T+
Forecast global AI investment in 2026
Goldman Sachs Research's forecast for AI investment this year. Every dollar of it lands as licensed hands on a site.
Goldman Sachs Research · August 2026
197,300
Electricians employed in Australia
Jobs and Skills Australia's occupation profile: median age 33, median weekly earnings A$2,191 - a pool APAC data centre delivery competes for against mining and utilities.
Jobs and Skills Australia · 2026
Third-party remarks summarised from the reporting linked on each card. Poachd is not affiliated with, and makes no claim of endorsement by, any person or organisation referenced.
After data centres
Data centres build the moat.
The next verticals inherit it.
The same capability graph extends into the tier-1 industries where this capability already works today — and feeds crossover supply back into the core. Data centres first, then these, in order.
- 01
Mining & METS
Shutdowns, HV switching, generator sync
- 02
Utilities & grid
Substations, protection, reticulation
- 03
Renewables & BESS
Storage, inverters, energisation
- 04
Advanced manufacturing
Fabs, cleanrooms, process automation
- 05
Aerospace & defence
Certified trades, secure sites
The people you need are already out there.
Poachd helps you find them.
Technical people create private Passports. Employers search, unlock and approach the people conventional recruitment keeps missing.
Be discoverable to data centre projects before you need it
I'm a data centre electrician / tradesperson
Add your tickets and experience. Get your Poachd rank out of 100, then claim it on your private Passport.
Rank my capability
Free · live score · no CV
I'm a data centre contractor / project
Test whether your programme can be staffed before you commit to the dates: capability depth, scarcity, rate bands and lead times inside your travel fence. Then hold your forward requirements on a watchlist and mobilise the people who make it deliverable.
Test my staffability
No vacancy needed · free to start
Working under your own ABN? Flag yourself for data centre subcontract packages as you sign up. Already with us? Sign in.
Create your Passport free, or tell us which scarce technical people you need to find.
Want the long version? Market numbers, how the graph works, verticals.
What Poachd is
Poachd is a capability discovery and workforce mobility platform connecting companies with proven skilled trades and technical professionals based on what they can actually do, where they are and their availability.
- What Poachd is
- A capability discovery and workforce mobility platform.
- Who it serves
- Skilled tradespeople, technical professionals and the companies that need scarce technical capability.
- Where
- Australia first, with relevance across APAC and other markets over time.
- The problem
- Companies struggle to find proven technical capability when skilled workers are scarce, because the best technical people are already working and are not applying for anything.
- The approach
- Make capability visible and directly discoverable, so companies can find people by what they can actually do rather than by what a CV says.
- What makes it different
- Poachd works from demonstrated capability, experience, location and availability instead of relying solely on job titles, CVs and conventional recruitment channels.
What Poachd is not
- A recruitment agency
- An agency owns the relationship and sells you a shortlist. Poachd gives you the search itself: you look at capability directly and approach people yourself, and nobody is on a commission to push a candidate.
- A labour hire company
- Labour hire supplies and employs the worker. Poachd does not employ anyone or on-hire workers - the hiring company holds the engagement, the obligations and the relationship.
- A job board
- A job board waits for people who are looking. The technical people who decide whether a project gets energised are already working, so Poachd is built around discovering them rather than advertising to them.
- A CV database
- A CV describes a job title and a date range. A capability profile records the systems someone has actually worked on, the licences they hold, where they can work and when - the things that decide whether they can do the work.
Where to go next
- How Poachd works - capability, discovery, connection, mobility, and what it costs.
- Skilled trades and technical capability - the capability categories Poachd models, trade by trade.
- Industries where capability decides delivery - data centres, electrical, construction, energy, rail, mining.
- What workforce capability means - why a job title does not describe what someone can do.
- Find technical people as a company - search by capability, systems experience, region and availability.
- Make your capability discoverable - free for tradespeople, private by default.