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Facebook is aggressively working to expand a team to build drones and other aircraft, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.
The company posted three new drone-related job openings on its website Thursday, seeking avionics, thermal, and power systems and control engineers to work on aircraft-related projects. Facebook was already advertising three aerospace-related job openings, seeking both technicians and engineers to work out of the company’s London office.
Those postings were published a few months after its acquisition of U.K.-based drone maker Ascenta in March, and a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that while the new job openings posted Thursday are for Facebook’s California offices, whoever is hired will work closely with the team in the U.K.
According to the aerospace postings, Facebook is looking for both associate and lead technicians to help with assembly of an aircraft’s mechanical structure, and it’s also looking for an engineer to “assist in the development, inspection and testing of a high-altitude solar powered aircraft.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in March that Facebook is looking to “build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone” as part of the company’s Internet.org initiative to get the entire world online. Yael Maguire, head of Facebook’s Connectivity efforts, told Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore in September that Facebook’s drones will be more like planes, possibly as big as a 747.
Maguire said the company is aiming to get its first drones or planes in the air by 2015.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
