Compute, connectivity and power were once three separate businesses. In digital infrastructure they are now one: the data centres that host artificial intelligence and cloud workloads, the fibre, subsea and mobile networks that move the traffic between them, and the energy and water that keep both running are planned, financed and contested together, and the C-Suite running these organisations are expected to hold all of it at once. Capital has arrived at a scale the sector has never seen, close to $45 billion in hyperscaler commitments alone across five years, but the constraints that now decide what actually gets built are physical: power, water and network capacity, and the land and community consent to secure them. In that environment, a single senior appointment can determine whether an organisation moves at the speed the market demands or spends years watching competitors lockup the power, the water, the sites and the customers first.

Omera Partners has built its digital infrastructure practice across the whole of that stack rather than one slice o fit. Our work runs from data centre developers and operators to the fibre, subsea and mobile network businesses that connect them, the tower and passive infrastructure companies that carry them, and the infrastructure funds and institutional investors that own the assets underneath. The practice is led by our Partner, Richard Sowter who has more than 15 years appointing Chief Executive Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Development Officers and their direct reports across this sector in Australia and Asia Pacific. That breadth changes how a brief is run. The person who can build and run a hyperscale data centre business is rarely the person who can run a carrier or a fibre platform, and knowing where those leadership profiles genuinely overlap, and where they only appear to, is the difference between a shortlist that reads well and one that performs.

Power is not the only constraint that decides these projects, but it is the one where Omera Partners has a specific edge. Because we run a dedicated energy practice alongside this one, we can bring leaders and non-executive directors who understand generation, grid and off take to organisations whose delivery depends on them, and we can test a digital infrastructure leader’s energy credentials against people who work in that market every day. Water and network access sit alongside power as make or break issues, and we brief for all three.

When Omera Partners takes a brief in this sector, the first questions are rarely about the individual. They are about where the organisation sits in the value chain, who its customers and capital providers are, how exposed it is to power, water and grid timelines, whether the connectivity its sites depend on actually exists yet, and whether the mandate is to build something new or to professionalise something that already exists. Those answers change the search entirely. A fund backed platform assembling capacity for hyperscale customers needs a different leader from a listed carrier defending margin in a mature market, and both need something different again from a business whose next two years turn on a single grid or water connection. Our network reflects that range: listed operators, private equity and infrastructure fund backed platforms, and the Australian and regional arms of global hyperscalers and carriers, with our deepest coverage on the eastern seaboard with growing reach across Western Australia, Queensland and the wider region.

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Market perspective

The binding constraints on this sector are physical, and there are three of them. Power is the most discussed: the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) expects data centre demand on the national grid to roughly triple by 2030 and to keep climbing for decades after, though the pipeline is harder to read than the headline implies, since only a fraction of the tens of gigawatts of connection requests sitting with network providers will ever become real load. Water is the constraint the market has been slower to price. Cooling design and water sourcing are set at approval stage and cannot be meaningfully changed once a facility is built, which fixes a project’s water draw and much of its operating cost for twenty to thirty years, and in Western Sydney and Melbourne, where much of the pipeline sits, utilities and communities are already scrutinising it closely.

Power and water also trade off against each other: the Western Sydney developers who recently moved from recycled water cooling to a water free system did so by pushing the load onto electricity, exactly the kind of decision boards now need to understand rather than delegate. Network capacity is the third constraint: as artificial intelligence reshapes traffic between data centres, investment is shifting from international subsea cables toward domestic long haul fibre, and the intercity routes now being built will determine which sites are viable at all. Over all three sits a harder policy frame. The Federal Government’s National Expectations for data centre and artificial intelligence infrastructure developers, published in March 2026, put energy, water and community consent at the centre of how projects are assessed and treats these assets as national interest infrastructure. The practical consequence for boards is a much narrower field of leaders who can hold power, water, connectivity, capital and regulation as a single problem.

Questions boards and chief executives should ask before appointing a digital infrastructure leader

1.  Does this leader understand exactly where our business sits in the digital infrastructure stack, and have they led in that layer rather than in an adjacent one that only looks similar from the outside?

2.  Can this leader tell real demand from speculative demand in this market, and sequence capital and commitments accordingly?

3.  Can they hold power, water and network access as a single feasibility question, and sit as credibly across the table from a grid operator or a water utility as from a hyperscale customer?

4.  Do they understand that the cooling, water sourcing and site decisions taken at approval stage lock in cost and risk for decades, and have they made those calls before under real scrutiny?

5.  Have they led through a full infrastructure capital cycle, including the point where cheap money stops and discipline decides which platforms survive?

Working with Omera Partners

Omera Partners advises boards and chief executives on senior leadership appointments across the digital infrastructure sector, from data centre developers and operators to network businesses and the infrastructure funds and institutional investors behind them. When a single appointment can determine whether an organisation secures the power, water and network access it needs to compete, the search deserves a firm that understands the sector as a whole, not one slice of it. That is the standard Omera Partners brings to every Digital Infrastructure appointment.

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