Facebook Opens First International Engineering Office In London

Billy Gallagher is a writer for TechCrunch. He is also the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. Billy previously worked at The Stanford Daily for two volumes as a managing editor of news. He has also worked in sports and staff development at The Daily. In March of 2012 the Friends of The Stanford Daily awarded him... ? Learn More

Facebook announced today that they have opened a London engineering office, adding to their Menlo Park, New York and Seattle engineering offices. The company has 22 open positions at the new office. Facebook says it has engineers scattered at its other numerous U.S. and foreign offices, but this is the first official international engineering office.

Calling the city a “perfect fit” in a blog post earlier today, Facebook software engineer and London team leader Philip Su wrote, “Our team in London will start small, focusing on building a core of great engineers, and then grow over time and eventually focus on building products in key areas like mobile and platform.”

The company currently has over 901 million monthly active numbers and estimates that over 80% of those users are outside the U.S. and Canada.

With the demand for engineers far, far exceeding the supply in Silicon Valley and the States in general, Facebook is looking to tap into other talent pools, writing that London “ has a vibrant local startup community with lots of great technical talent.” While there are other talent pools besides London, I imagine the lack of a language barrier makes London one of the most attractive places for a new engineering team. Could more companies follow suit? And if so, where will they go once they’ve grabbed all the talent in London?

Update: I’ve obtained video of what I’m told is Mark Zuckerberg arriving in London. Groovy, baby.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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