Facebook poaches Mozilla vice president

Facebook has poached Mozilla vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer to join it as director of engineering, as the social networking site continues to overhaul its site. He will report directly to founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Schroepfer will be responsible for front-end product development and platform engineering. It is understood he will focus on improving the look and accessibility of the site, particularly as Facebook continues to add features in order to attract new users and advertisers.

At Mozilla, he built web browser Firefox 3 and manages the product development process. Zuckerberg says: “Facebook has similar values and Mike will be a great addition to our engineering team.”

Developments Facebook has recently rolled out include NewsFeed, Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. It has overhauled the look of the site, which is in beta testing at the moment.

Prior to Mozilla, Scroepfer worked for organisations including Sun Microsystems.