Facebook Fills Vacant CTO Role By Promoting Its VP Of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer

Mark Zuckerberg has just made an internal announcement to Facebook naming its veteran VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer as CTO, we’ve just learned from an industry source. Facebook has since confirmed to TechCrunch that Schroepfer will take the postion previously held by Bret Taylor, who left last year. Schroepfer has been at Facebook for nearly five years and led most of its latest mobile efforts.

Prior to Facebook, Schroepfer, or “Schrep” as he’s referred to internally, held the VP of Engineering role at Mozilla for three years.

Sources tell us that the promotion is to “represent Schrep’s long service to the company.” A company spokesperson told TechCrunch “Mike Schroepfer’s new designation as Facebook’s CTO reflects the unique and important role he plays across the company.”

With Facebook’s focus clearly centering on bringing the mobile experience to all devices, including the desktop, this move makes complete sense.

Facebook has experienced a significant loss of top talent as many VPs and directors have left over the last 8 months since the IPO. Of course there are lots of high ranking roles at a company of 4600, but in the last year departures include Taylor, Director of Product Blake Ross, Director of Product Management and Open Graph leader Carl Sjogreen, Seattle office head Ari Steinberg, and more. The promotion could make sure Schrep sticks around and could inspire hope for advancement in newer Facebook employees.

Over the years of working with Schrep, I’ve [Josh] found him to maintain a calm confidence about Facebook’s plan, and command great respect from his peers. He’s no young hot shot, but is more so one that could help Facebook stay the course and remain a reliably popular place to work.