Facebook Has A New CTO

On paper, Schroepfer is assuming the position Bret Taylor held until he left Facebook last year to found a startup.

But it sounds like this title bump is more about recognizing Schroepfer's importance to the company than changing his job.

"Mike Schroepfer’s new designation as Facebook’s CTO reflects the unique and important role he plays across the company," a spokesperson told AllThingsD.

Taylor was a much more product-focused CTO, playing a key role in the launch of Facebook's Open Graph technology for app developers. That role is largely filled by product chief Chris Cox, who helped unveil Facebook's new News Feed earlier this month.

Schroepfer, who joined Facebook in 2008 and was previously its vice president of engineering, has been more concerned with the site's infrastructure and reliability and its shift to mobile. That's a critical role, and Facebook is smart to give him a bigger title.

Schroepfer previously founded a company, CenterRun, which he sold to Sun Microsystems, and served as vice president of engineering for Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox Web browser.