Facebook backs Government campaign to inspire engineers of the future

04 January, 2019

Kyle McGinn, director of product at Facebook, said: Supporting emerging STEM talent is something we are really committed to, which is why we’re pleased to welcome hundreds of aspiring young engineers at our offices today and launch our mentoring programme. Facebook’s largest engineering hub outside of the US is based right here in London and our teams have worked on some of our biggest global innovations including Oculus and Workplace. We’re proud to say we’ll be hiring hundreds more engineers in the next year as part of our wider investment to the UK and as we expand, we want to encourage the UK’s next generation of talent as part of our support for Year of Engineering and through our new mentorship program.

Engineering makes a major contribution to the UK economy, but the sector faces a major skills gap and lack of diversity – there is annual shortage of 20,000 engineering graduates each year, only 12% of the engineering workforce is female, and less than 8% comes from a black, Asian or ethnic minority background.