Facebook sent out a press release this morning announcing plans to open an engineering office in New York City during 2012. A 2pm EST video press conference regarding the move features remarks from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Charles E. Schumer and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Rather than functioning as a satellite studio, the NYC office will be a core engineering hub for the social network. It’s being headed by Facebook’s Serkan Piantino, who previously served on the News Feed engineering team and built the infrastructure for Timeline and now managing the teams behind Messages and Chat. Facebook’s Jay Parikh, who currently oversees Facebook’s infrastructure team, will function as the executive sponsor for the office.

A driving theme of the press conference is the creation of new jobs in New York City. Sandberg also highlighted opportunities for women in the tech space. Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Schumer also stressed the vision of New York City as a tech hub, which challenges to the popular view of the East Coast as the home of traditional businesses like print media and banking. Senator Schumer claims New York City is now just behind San Francisco and ahead of Boston, MA in volume of tech companies.

Facebook opened new headquarters in Menlo Park, CA over the summer as well as additional offices abroad. Job listings for Facebook’s NYC office can be found here. The office currently has 100 people, consisting mainly of non-engineers. Facebook also runs its global sales out of a different New York office set up in 2007.