MSNBC has made a major hire for its news team, tapping Jacob Soboroff as senior national and political correspondent.

Soboroff, currently a national and political correspondent for NBC News, will jump to MSNBC as the cable news channel prepares to split from NBC as part of the Versant spinoff. He will continue to be based in Los Angeles.

He is no stranger to MSNBC viewers, appearing frequently on the channel, including his work on a special primetime town hall earlier this year. His coverage of the fires in Los Angeles earlier this year garnered critical praise. He was also the EP of the Errol Morris doc Separated, based on his best-selling book.

Last year Comcast announced that it would shed most of its cable channels into a separate company, to be called Versant. That will include MSNBC and CNBC, while CNBC has mostly operated autonomously from NBC News over the years, MSNBC has traditionally leaned on NBC News journalists and talent to supplement its opinion programming. Given the split, MSNBC has been building out an entire news organization (albeit one a little more centered on politics) over the past few months to prepare for the spinoff.

NBC News, for example, secured a deal with Steve Kornacki, taking the data guru from MSNBC. Versant, meanwhile, brought in the EP of NBC Nightly News, as well as a number of NBC News veterans, as it builds out its D.C. operation.