It's first such office outside of the West Coast. Officials said the move is being made to help improve recruiting the best and the brightest talent.
"Facebook is capitalizing on what more and more tech companies are realizing: that New York City is the best place in the world to recruit and retain a talented workforce," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "The growth in the tech sector is creating jobs and further diversifying our economy. That's why we are invested in expanding our engineering workforce by building a new applied sciences school in the city. We want to do everything we can to make sure that Facebook can grow here, and that the next Facebook will be founded here."
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg would not say how many people Facebook plans to hire in New York, but said it plans to add "thousands" worldwide in coming years.
The Facebook NYC will open in early 2012.
"New York has a strong history of innovation and is home to thousands of talented technical people, and we want them to help us solve the challenges of designing and building the next generation of Facebook," Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's Vice President of Engineering.
The office will be led by Serkan Piantino, an engineering manager at Facebook who previously managed the engineering team behind Facebook's News Feed and built the infrastructure behind Timeline.
Potential applicants for the Facebook engineering team in NYC can review the first listing of available positions at https://www.facebook.com/nycjobs. Others interested in receiving updates on the developments at the office can like the Facebook Page for NYC Engineering at https://www.facebook.com/fbnyc .
Facebook already employs about 100 people in New York City. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
