Facebook is dedicated to ramping up development in its virtual reality and drone projects and hopes to do so by recruiting more employees.
The social networking giant plans spending the next few months hiring at least 1,200 new staff members, according to Time. The move would also go toward building new data centers for future initiatives.
"We are an ambitious company run by an ambitious CEO," said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. "Our users are growing and our business is growing and we want to support that."
Facebook had 8,348 full-time employees at the end of September, and a review of job listings on the company's website says the hiring spree is aimed at increasing staff by as much as 14 percent, Reuters reported.
Several positions are planned to be filed for Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset maker that Facebook bought for $2 billion last year. These positions include managers for overseeing logistics, procurement and global supply chain planning.
Facebook is also looking for specialists in avionics, radio frequency communications, thermal engineering and other areas for its drone and satellite initiative, which aims to deliver internet access to remote areas around the world, Reuters reported.
People familiar with the situation say Facebook's new data center will be built in Seattle and that the company wants it to be able to hold as many as 2,000 employees. The move would add to the 400-plus employees the company already has in the city.
Facebook is also expected to begin construction for a new, roughly 500,000-square-foot building at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. that can hold 3,000 employees, Reuters reported. There are also more than 20 positions Facebook plans on filing for the online advertising technology Atlas, which the company bought in 2013.
While Facebook doesn't have as many employees as Google (about 55,000) or Microsoft (about 127,000), revenue calculations show that Facebook employees each made about $384,000 in the third quarter of 2014, while Google employees each made $300,000 and Microsoft employees each made $183,000. The new hiring spree is sure to give the social network an even greater advantage over its competitors.
