Facebook has announced today that it is opening its first engineering office in London and is looking to hire an engineering team.

It has openings for as many as 22 engineers  in London which will become Facebook’s first international  engineering office joining its Menlo Park HQ, New York and Seattle.

The new office will be headed by Philip Su, a software engineer at Facebook who previously worked at Microsoft, who is moving to London.

In a blog post Su said that London was a perfect fit for Facebook engineering because it is a global hub with a vibrant local start-up community and lots of great technical talent.

“Our team in London will start small, focusing on building a core of great engineers, and then grow over time and eventually focus on building products in key areas like mobile and platform.

“We are a culture of builders, and the environment we plan to create in London will reflect that. Despite the size of our service – 900 million users and growing – we still push new code to the site every day. We eliminate unnecessary process and give all our engineers the opportunity to work on the things that matter most. Our engineers in London – like those in Menlo Park, New York, and Seattle – will be able to pursue great ideas and ship products quickly.

The news follows Amazon announcing earlier this week that it is to open a digital innovation hub in East London. The Digital Media Development Centre, based in Glasshouse Yard in Barbican, will house hundreds of Amazon technical staff.

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