Facebook’s Blockchain Group Grows–What Could the Hiring Spree Mean?

A post on Facebook’s careers page has revealed that the company is searching for a “head of business development & partnerships” for its new blockchain department at its headquarters in Silicon Valley.

“The Head of BD and Partnership team will play a key role in shaping and pushing forward this vision by bringing the voice of our global partners to inform our product, strategy and investments while also negotiating and closing deals to realize the vision,” the job description reads.

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Facebook’s Blockchain Initiatives Become Clearer and Clearer

This posting mark’s the company’s sixth vacancy for members of its new blockchain group. So far, Facebook has publicly searched for a software engineering manager in Israel, a media director, a public policy manager, and two marketing professionals.

“The blockchain team is a startup within Facebook, with a vision to make blockchain technology work at Facebook scale and improve the lives of billions of people around the world,” reads the job post.

While the exact focus of the blockchain initiative has not yet been made public, there has been some indication of what the group will be building. A job posting for a Software Engineering Manager read that “the Tel-Aviv engineering team will participate in shaping and pushing forward this vision, while focusing on the development of a state-of-the-art near real-time AI platform, to serve the blockchain project.”

A Slow Build-Up

Rumors of a Facebook blockchain project originally emerged in January of this year, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his 2018 mission statement that he was interested in blockchain’s decentralization capabilities.

Facebook’s true intentions weren’t revealed until May, when head of Facebook Messenger David Marcus Tweeted that he was changing positions in order to “set up a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain for Facebook.”

Time for a new challenge! After four amazing years leading Messenger, I’m going to setup a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain for Facebook. I will miss my fierce Messenger team, but I’m excited about the journey ahead. My full note: https://t.co/nBKAr7vyj9

— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) May 8, 2018

Marcus joined as a sitting member of the Coinbase advisory board in January of this year, but stepped down from the position in August to avoid a conflict of interest.

Facebook also recently relaxed the advertising ban it placed on crypto-related companies earlier this year.