Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer will be stepping down from his role and transitioning to a new part time role as Facebook’s first Senior Fellow at the company in 2022, the executive has said.

“After 13 amazing years at Facebook, I have made the decision to step down as Chief Technology Officer and transition to a new part time role as Facebook’s first Senior Fellow at the company sometime in 2022,” Schroepfer or ‘Schrep’ as he is known wrote on Facebook.

Schroepfer in his new role will be working on initiatives including recruiting and developing technical talent and continuing to foster the company’s AI investments in critical technologies like PyTorch, he said.

Schroepfer will be succeeded by Andrew Bosworth (Boz) who will be transitioning into the role of CTO in 2022.

Facebook Reality Labs

Bosworth created and has been heading the social media major’s augmented reality/virtual reality organisation — which was renamed Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) in 2020 — where he drives all of Facebook’s efforts in augmented reality, virtual reality and consumer hardware across Oculus, Portal, and Facebook Reality Labs Research.

Also see: Instagram and Facebook to host virtual creator event in India on September 30

“These contributions are foundational components of our broader efforts to help build the metaverse. I’m confident and grateful for Boz’s leadership and the deep and talented technical bench of leaders we have at the helm,” Schroepfer wrote.

“I want to take a moment to thank Schrep for his extraordinary contributions to our community and our company over the last 13 years. He has played a critical role in almost everything we’ve done — from building and scaling our teams to mentoring many of our key leaders, and from helping us develop new technologies like AI and VR to operating our infrastructure and business services at global scale,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

“Once Schrep has transitioned into his new role next year, Andrew Bosworth will become our next CTO. Schrep and I have both worked closely with Boz on organizational planning for some time. As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz’s team as well. This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I’m excited about the future of this work under Boz’s leadership,” he added.

Metaverse

Facebook is betting big on ‘metaverse’. Zuckerberg had first talked about the tech giant’s vision to build a metaverse — a virtual environment where one can be present with people in digital spaces — calling it a successor of the mobile internet.

As the Facebook CEO had explained in a post on the platform, users will be able to access the metaverse from different devices in different levels of fidelity ranging from apps on phones and PCs to immersive virtual and augmented reality devices.

“Within the metaverse, you’ll be able to hang out, play games with friends, work, create, and more. You’ll basically be able to do anything you can do on the internet today and some things that don’t make sense on the internet today, like dancing,” the Facebook CEO wrote.

Also see: Into the Metaverse

As part of Facebook’s next chapter, the company in July announced that it will be setting up a new Metaverse product group.

“Each of our major initiatives — community, creators, commerce, the next computing platform, etc — will unlock many new experiences by themselves. But together, they’re all part of a much larger goal: helping to bring the metaverse to life. I believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet, and creating this product group is the next step in our journey to help build it,” Zuckerberg had said.

The company will be working on “new protocols and standards, new devices, new chips, and new software — from rendering engines to payment systems and everything in between,” he had said.