We met with Atish Banerjea, Chief Information Officer, to learn about enterprise engineering at Meta, hear about some of the products that we are building across the company, stand out moments and what makes a successful leader at Meta.

I have been in the industry for more than 20 years, leading technology-driven business management, scaling and innovation of technologies that drive business transformations.

At Meta, as Chief Information Officer, I'm responsible for overseeing the global enterprise engineering organization. My team builds and runs the systems that scale Meta globally — helping us achieve our mission of bringing the world closer together.

Enterprise Engineering (EE) at Meta builds innovative people-centric enterprise solutions that transform and accelerate Meta's business. We operate important IT systems efficiently and securely, while providing reliable products, services and meaningful insights to our employees.

We have people in 20 countries, and are scaling up our teams fast. Here's a breakdown of our work:

Enterprise products drives impactful business outcomes by enabling productivity at scale. This team builds tools to help create an exceptional and efficient work environment. Their solutions power finance, data center operations, supply chain, legal, facilities and physical security.

AR/VR provides the platform that drives the shop, buy and use experiences for Meta’s hardware products.

Knowledge, marketing and sales build marketing products that enable our marketing, sales and Workplace teams to reach billions of consumers interested in our products and businesses that want to advertise on our platforms. This team also builds knowledge management products that help employees create and find the information they need to efficiently support customers, close sales and build great products.

People engineering builds the tools to find, grow and keep people at Meta. This team uses technology, data, and research to build solutions for every stage of the employee lifecycle, from recruiting and engagement to enrichment and evaluation.

Enterprise operations boost workforce productivity by making operations invisible. This team manages foundational collaboration tools like email and video chat, and is also recognized for world-class, production-quality studio events around the world. They create innovative and scalable IT solutions for our employee needs.

Enterprise platforms infrastructure ships secure & reliable Infrastructure engineering tools and services. This team provides the backbone of the infrastructure that the company runs on - network, servers, database, storage, etc. They work on a wide breadth of technologies and products.

Enterprise security covers every EE initiative with a robust security approach, working in collaboration with several information security teams across Meta. This team analyzes new risks, creates threat models and implements security solutions for each layer of cutting-edge technologies used by Meta.

Meta's speed and efficiency is powered by the right tools at the right time enabling us to take the right set of actions, and our ability to access the data and technology we need to do our jobs and make informed decisions. The enterprise engineering team enables people to work more efficiently and have more connected experiences at work. Our team anticipates, supports and delivers on the needs of a large and unique workforce. All Meta employees consume our services, so our scale is unprecedented and our opportunity to have an impact is endless.

Of course, to do all of this, we need to meet many challenges. We are solution-seekers and bold builders who see problems as opportunities, and draw on a breadth of skills(technology, people, business) to bring in resources that enable the success of every Meta employee and Meta as a company. Our team tackles a wide range of work including integration, engineering, relationship management, business analysis, customer advocacy, and a lot more to address small and big problems.

A key part of what we do and how we are different than any other IT organization is our ability to build and innovate to create the best experience for our people to do their jobs better. Often times Meta works in ways that third-party software or a set of practices doesn't fit the bill for us, and it makes more sense to engineer what we need as it powers our accelerated growth, scale and productivity. We have a thriving engineering mindset across enterprise engineering and focus on building our solutions internally on the Meta stack versus buying them externally.

As part of the EE team, you work alongside trailblazers who aim to transform, accelerate and pioneer the future of Meta.

Unlike traditional IT teams, our team doesn't bend the company to fit complex software. Instead, we build custom product solutions tailored to the needs of our company. And we do so much more: internal infrastructure, operations, events and enterprise-grade products. Our engineering DNA shapes everything we do, enabling our team to transition to more of a product organization with deep expertise in engineering, design and product management.

Event operations: The EE Events team is recognized for doing world-class, professional production quality events around the globe. They ensure that Meta is at the forefront of what is possible in the event space which includes their newest two thousand person event space located in Menlo Park, CA. The events team rival the abilities of leading production studios and entertainment companies in this space. They also partner with Meta’s gaming vertical to host events and tournaments both domestically and internationally. Most importantly, this example is representative of how we bring technology, business, and our global presence to build innovative solutions for Meta.

Workplace integration: Workplace is Meta's enterprise collaboration platform, and more than 30,000 organizations are using it around the world. At Meta, we've witnessed first hand the impact Workplace can have when it is used to collaborate and move fast to get things done at work. Workplace is now our central console where we are building deep integrations with all the other enterprise products. In the past, all other enterprise tools have been isolated. By creating a more integrated environment, we're enabling Meta employees to be successful in their job versus this being another fragmented tool that’s not connected to anything else.

We found that using Workplace is a great way to test new ideas, features and products as it gives us access to a large group of users — our entire global employee base of tens of thousands. For example, we have developed Safety Check for Workplace, an enterprise employee safety feature that is a powerful tool for companies to quickly and efficiently reach and account for their employees in times of crisis, natural disasters or operational incidents. This product will make Workplace communities more connected and resilient especially in difficult times. We’re particularly excited about this because it is Meta's first enterprise engineering product to ship externally through Workplace.

Meta has a "strengths-based" culture which aims to identify and foster employees' talents rather than try to round out their weaknesses. This allows us build on what our people are good at instead of what can be fixed, maximizing the power of their skills and inspiring them with confidence. By aligning our people's strengths and passions with the right projects, leaders at Meta are able to drive high results and cultivate productivity and innovation in their teams.

Another unique aspect of leading teams at Meta is our strong open culture. One of our five core values is Be Open. Getting your team to trust you and to mutually share honest feedback, interests and motivations is highly valued. It is the norm to share wins as well as failures openly within the company. Leaders work hard to foster a culture that is inclusive, transparent and accessible and that enables individuals to get involved in activities that play to their areas of focus and passion.

We also have a huge focus on diversity to ensure that we hire people from diverse backgrounds who bring in diverse perspectives. Our teams are built to support distinct voices and reflect the diversity of the audiences we serve. We run many transformational internal programs to foster diversity, an example is the "Be the ally circle" that helps colleagues understand and support each other's points of view. We have also created shEE (as an organization of women and men within the Meta’s enterprise engineering community) to provide a platform that enables career development and growth opportunities for women.

Something that stands out for me is the on-boarding program I attended when I joined Meta. In my first month here, I went through an extensive course to learn about our advertising products. In order to successfully play the role of a key technologist, my role as the CIO is to not only focus on the internal services for the organization, but to also have a very good understanding of the products and services Meta is building for their customers. Then I am able to advise key business leaders on how to get the most value from technologies delivering those products or services. My learnings from our on-boarding program have been immensely helpful in thinking about technology solutions that fit the needs of our various groups and help drive our core business forward.

Another standout moment for me was when I attended my first Mark's weekly Q&A. Getting the opportunity to pose a question to Mark, Sheryl, or any of our executive team is a privilege. All employees are enabled to submit questions or ask them on the day, and Mark addresses the key concerns at these weekly Q&A's. These events are a core part of our open and transparent culture at Meta.

What Meta is to the world, Enterprise Engineering is to Meta. While Meta is building the platform to bring external communities around the world together, enterprise engineering is building the platforms, products and services to bring the global Meta community together. enterprise engineering builds next generation people-centric enterprise solutions that transform and accelerate Meta's business, having a unique chance to redefine enterprise software for Meta. The key points of intersection across Meta's mission and our team's charter are being people-centric and the concept of empowering a community.

As the priorities of the company change, ours change too, because we are in lockstep with everything that happens across Meta. This is one of the few teams that is embedded into what everyone else is doing so that we can help steer the company in the direction it wants to go.