Facebook is going on a hiring spree as the company is looking to fill 1,159 job openings. Once filled, the number of employees of Facebook will have increased by as much as 14 percent, Reuters reported.
The massive need for new employees is driven by the aggressive investments that Facebook has made, including within the fields of drones, virtual reality and data centers.
Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset maker that was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion last year, is one of the areas within the company that is poised to grow, with 54 job openings listed on its website.
Some of the positions required by Facebook for its Oculus Rift division include managers for procurement, logistics and global supply chain planning, which could be a sign that the much-anticipated commercial release for the Oculus Rift headset is coming soon.
The ambitious efforts of Facebook to create a network of drones and satellites to connect remote locations all over the world to the Internet also looks to be a significant space for new hires, with Facebook looking for employees that specialize in fields such as radio frequency communications, avionics and thermal engineering.
Atlas, the technology for online advertising that the company purchased back in 2013, is also expanding with over 20 job openings waiting to be filled.
"We are an ambitious company run by an ambitious CEO," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said to Reuters during an interview.
Sandberg added that Facebook only looks to support its expanding business and growing number of users, noting that the company itself is more widespread today with offices all over the world compared to a few years ago.
Other positions that Facebook is looking to fill span a wide range of jobs that include sales positions and highly-technical software engineers.
Facebook continues its expansion into new markets, but at the same time is facing challenges from companies such as Google and Alibaba Group.
"There's a fairly direct correlation between their investment in people and servers and infrastructure, and their ability to remain competitive," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst for Robert Baird & Co.
By the end of September last year, Facebook had 8,348 full-time employees working the company. The figure is much lower compared to the roughly 55,000 workers that Google employs and the roughly 127,000 employees working at Microsoft, though the software giant did announce in the summer that the company was planning to lay off 18,000 employees.
The smaller headcount for Facebook however has allowed the company to attract the best programmers as employees are permitted to use their skills directly on the products used by Facebook's users, a promise that would be difficult to make for companies with larger employee counts.
