Facebook’s Seattle engineering office will move to a new downtown location next year, twice the size of its existing space, to create room for additional growth beyond the 60 engineers it already has working here.
“We’re excited to announce that we’re moving to a new office space in downtown Seattle early next year,” said Ari Steinberg, who heads the Facebook Seattle engineering office, in a post on Facebook today. “This move will give us room to keep growing as we continue hiring the best engineers we can find.”
GeekWire previously reported that Facebook was on the prowl for bigger offices in Seattle, a tech community that Mark Zuckerberg touted for its strong engineering pool in a recent visit. The expansion also comes after Zuckerberg remarked last week that Silicon Valley isn’t “the only place to be” and noted that if he were starting Facebook again he would have stayed in Boston.
Facebook opened the Seattle office in August 2010. It has since become the largest Facebook engineering center outside of Palo Alto. Engineers in the Seattle office work on projects including projects such as Video Calling, the iPad and other iOS projects, and site stability and reliability issues.
The company is taking 27,000 square feet at 1730 Minor Ave., farther inland than its current Pike Place Market location, but still boasting a sweeping view of the city and the Space Needle. The move is expected to be finished by February, according to a company spokesman.
The new offices will have room for about 135 workers. A number of Silicon Valley giants, including Salesforce.com and Zynga, have established new engineering centers in Seattle over the past year.
