Facebook promises 1,000 new jobs in London as Brexit looms

COO Sheryl Sandberg is visiting London to speak about Facebook's continued investment in the UK.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent

Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.

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Katie Collins

Jan. 21, 2020 6:43 a.m. PT

2 min read

gettyimages-1195111299 — Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has announced new jobs in London.
Dominic Lipinski/PA Images via Getty Images

Facebook promised on Tuesday to create 1,000 new jobs in London this year as part of its ongoing commitment to invest in the UK ahead of the country's expected departure from the EU.

In a speech to small and medium businesses in the British capital, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg praised the strength of engineering and advertising skills in the UK. She added that once the company's new office opens in the Kings Cross area of the city next year, there will be room to create even more new jobs.

"We know there's been some uncertainty about Britain's future, and we believe the UK is an important place for us to invest," said Sandberg. "So today we're really pleased to announce that we're hiring another thousand people in London just this year. These are highly skilled jobs to help us address the challenges of an open internet."

Facebook opened its first office in London 10 years ago and now employs over 3,000 people there who work on projects such as Slack rival Workplace and Facebook's "community integrity" team, which focuses on removing harmful content. The UK remains the company's largest engineering hub outside of the US.

Sandberg's words and Facebook's promise of new jobs could help reassure people concerned about whether the UK will continue attract investment from tech giants and remain an appealing place to conduct business post-Brexit. The UK is set to leave the European Union on Jan. 31, and much currently remains unknown about how that will impact the UK tech sector.

UK government ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of the tech sector to the country's post-Brexit success. Despite uncertainty, British tech received record levels of investment last year. And at CES earlier this month in Las Vegas, the country's investment minister said he's confident the trend will continue.