San Francisco, Jan 29 (IANS): Facebook's Vice President of Engineering Jay Parikh has announced that he is leaving the company, joining a number of executives who have departed the social networking giant over the past few years.

Parikh, who joined Facebook in 2009, announced his decision to leave the company in a post on Tuesday.

"I have some bittersweet news to share. It's time for me to step out of Facebook to explore what's next," Parikh said in the post.

"As for what's next -- I'm not going anywhere just yet. I'll be focused on the transition for the next few months. I don't have any immediate plans thereafter. I'm excited to spend time rediscovering what else is happening across our industry and to meet up with many new people," he added.

Parikh is credited for building Facebook's crucial data centre infrastructure on which numerous apps and services of the social network are built.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Parikh for his contrition towards building the engineering infrastructure for the company.

"A lot of what we've achieved over the past eleven years just wouldn't have been possible without you. I don't think we even had a data centre when you joined, and now we share our designs so the rest of the world can catch up," Zuckerberg said.

"I think the most important thing you built here though was our culture -- not just around technical excellence in infra and eng, but for the company as a whole. It's been wonderful watching you grow as a leader and I'm looking forward to seeing what problems you go solve next. Thanks for everything," he added.

David Mortenson will replace Parikh in leading Facebook's infrastructure organisation, CNBC reported, citing a company spokesman.

Several engineering leaders are expected to share Parikh's other responsibilities.