Facebook plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years, as well as 250 in Israel, the social-media giant said Monday, to help build the so-called metaverse – a nascent online world where people exist and communicate in shared virtual spaces.
This would be a significant step the company is taking toward the concept, something CEO Mark Zuckerberg has touted in recent months.
Facebook’s research and development center in Tel Aviv, one of the company’s main strategic hubs, includes teams working to translate the metaverse vision into reality, developing virtual, augmented and mixed-reality technologies.
Other teams in Israel are working on Facebook’s Shops products, which the company believes is the future of digital commerce. Facebook products include its Lite apps, the Novi digital-wallet system under development and the Express Wi-Fi venture, which will help connect developing countries to the Internet.
The company is actively recruiting developers, data engineers, product managers, designers, technical recruiters and others in Tel Aviv, including positions for university graduates without prior work experience, as well as internship programs.
In September, Facebook committed $50 million toward building the metaverse, where companies like Roblox Corp. and Fortnite maker Epic Games have an early foothold.
The company earlier launched a test of a new virtual-reality remote work app, which enables users of the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets to hold meetings as avatar versions of themselves.
Facebook also said in July it was creating a product team to work on the metaverse, which would be part of Facebook Reality Labs, its augmented- and virtual-reality group.
“This investment [in new jobs] is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent,” Facebook said.