CHARLOTTE — Time Warner Cable said Monday it would add hundreds of jobs in Charlotte over the next three years and build its second U.S. data center to better handle video, data and voice traffic.

The country’s second-largest cable operator said it will hire 225 new accounting, finance, engineering, IT and human resources workers by 2014 to qualify for up to almost $3 million in state grants linked to hiring and investment targets. The company must hire at least 64 workers by the end of 2012 under terms of its state incentives deal. Charlotte, the city’s chamber of commerce and the state community college system are also adding sweeteners.

The new jobs will pay an average of $61,044, more than the Mecklenburg County average of $51,584. The company now employs nearly 2,800 people in the Charlotte area and more than 6,400 statewide.

Time Warner Cable also said it will spend $101 million to construct a four-story office building in addition to its data center, which will combine computer storage and networking functions. The building due to be completed by the end of 2012 will be large enough to allow double the computer servers and other equipment in anticipation of future growth.

The company joins a growing list of companies bringing data centers to North Carolina, following similar decisions by Facebook, Apple, Google, IBM, SAS and American Express.

Data centers are big collections of Internet servers able to process tremendous amounts of data traffic. They are expanding as technology migrates to the concept of cloud computing, where information that once was kept on individual computers is stored in a sort of digital warehouse, making it cheaper and available whenever it’s demanded.

North Carolina has a combination of natural and man-made advantages that draw data centers, including relatively cheap electricity and a climate that doesn’t reach the extremes of cold and heat that are a challenge for facilities with huge amounts of sensitive electronic equipment. The state Legislature also has passed a number of tax incentives specifically aimed at data centers.

Time Warner Cable’s data center allows the company “to focus on delivering services for customers with greater effectiveness and reliability and with less cost and environmental impact,” national network operations and engineering executive vice president Jim Ludington said.

Time Warner Cable has more than 14 million customers in 28 states, but most are clustered in North and South Carolina, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Southern California. Corporate offices are in New York and four other cities including Charlotte.

The cable giant and AOL Inc. were spun off from New York-based Time Warner Inc. in 2009.