Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview The Microsoft Research AI Frontiers group in Redmond is looking for a Senior Research Software Engineer to build state-of-the-art tools for evaluating and understanding foundation models, with a focus of real-world uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our team conducts influential research published at top-tier venues in AI and ML (including NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, and FAccT) and works within Microsoft’s Responsible AI ecosystem to impact our AI-driven technologies such as Azure, Office, and Bing.

We are seeking candidates with demonstrated ability for technical work in the space of large foundational models with proficient coding and machine learning skills. The preferred candidate is:

Passionate about rigorous evaluation, understanding, and development of foundational models.
Motivated to make successful research methods accessible to the AI community through prototypes, open-source libraries, and development tools. Proficient in design thinking and Object Oriented Design (OOD), building clean, modular, maintainable and user-friendly open-source ML Experienced in measuring and maximizing the impact of open-source libraries.

As a Senior Research Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in designing and developing impactful, high quality and well-engineered frameworks to empower the scientific evaluation, understanding, and development of foundational models. You will work closely with a team of passionate researchers and engineers to make sure such frameworks are compatible with modern cloud platforms, Machine Learning (ML) frameworks and libraries, model architectures, and various data modalities. You will also play a central role in defining and running large-scale experiments that contribute to our team’s research.

We are looking for a team player interested in developing next-generation platforms and tools for Machine Learning (ML) as well as conducting state-of-the-art research. Topics of interest include but are not limited to rigorous evaluation and benchmarking, advances in AI interpretability, bias and fairness, and safety in real-world deployments. Our group takes a holistic approach to studying foundational models that includes a variety of data modalities (language, vision, multi-modal, and structured data) and modern model architectures. Candidates should demonstrate expertise in many of these aspects or show that they are interested in generalizing their skills into a variety of modalities and architectures.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we’re dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

Responsibilities Collaborate with a dedicated research and engineering team to design and develop ML frameworks for model evaluation and understanding.

• Define benchmarks and execute experiments for rigorous model evaluation and understanding.

• System Design and Object-Oriented Design: Envision elegant solutions and craft scalable and efficient systems to drive the success of our Machile Learning (ML) frameworks. Develop clean, modular, and maintainable code to shape the foundation of our evaluation framework.

• Work closely with partner engineering teams in both research and production.

• Mentor or onboard incoming engineering contributors and empower them to maximize the team’s impact.

Redwood City, CA; or Remote, US

We help make autonomous technologies more efficient, safer, and accessible.

Helm.ai builds AI software for autonomous driving and robotics. Our "Deep Teaching" methodology is uniquely data and capital efficient, allowing us to surpass traditional approaches. Our unsupervised learning software can train neural networks without the need for human annotation or simulation and is hardware-agnostic. We work with some of the world's largest automotive manufacturers and we've raised over $100M from Honda, Goodyear Ventures, Mando, and others to help us scale.

Our team is made up of people with a diverse set of experiences in software and academia. We work together towards one common goal: to integrate the software you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

We offer: - Competitive health insurance options - 401K plan management - Remote-friendly and flexible team culture - Free lunch and fully-stocked kitchen in our South Bay office - Additional perks: monthly wellness stipend, office set up allowance, company retreats, and more to come as we scale - The opportunity to work on one of the most interesting, impactful problems of the decade

Visit our website to apply for a position.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview We are seeking a highly skilled and passionate Research Scientist to join our Responsible & OpenAI Research (ROAR) team in Azure Cognitive Services.

As a Research Scientist, you will play a key role in advancing the field of Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure safe releases of the rapidly advancing AI technologies, such as GPT-4, GPT-4V, DALL-E 3 and beyond, as well as to expand and enhance our standalone Azure AI Content Safety Service.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities Conduct cutting-edge research to develop Responsible AI definitions, methodologies, algorithms, and models for both measurement and mitigation of AI risks. Stay abreast of the latest advancements in the field and contribute to the scientific community through publications at top venues. Contribute to the development of Responsible AI policies, guidelines, and best practices and ensure the practical implementation of these guidelines within various AI technology stacks across Microsoft, promoting a consistent approach to Responsible AI. Enable the safe release of new Azure OpenAI Service features, expand and enhance the Azure AI Content Safety Service with new detection technologies. Develop innovative approaches to address AI safety challenges for diverse customer scenarios. Other: Embody our Culture and Values

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR), a leading industrial research laboratory comprised of over 1,000 computer scientists working across the United States, United Kingdom, China, India, Canada, and the Netherlands.

We are currently seeking a Senior Researcher in the area of  Artificial Specialized Intelligence located in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a keen interest in developing cutting-edge large foundation models and post-training techniques for different domains and scenarios. This is an opportunity to drive an ambitious research agenda while collaborating with diverse teams to push for novel applications of those areas.  
  Over the past 30 years, our scientists have not only conducted world-class computer science research but also integrated advanced technologies into our products and services, positively impacting millions of lives and propelling Microsoft to the forefront of digital transformation.

Responsibilities Conduct cutting-edge research in large foundation models, focusing on applying large foundation models in specific domain. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate solutions into Artificial Intelligence (AI) -driven system. Develop and maintain research prototypes and software tools, ensuring that they are well-documented and adhere to best practices in software development. Publish research findings in top-tier conferences and journals and present your work at industry events. Collaborate with other AI researchers and engineers, sharing knowledge and expertise to foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning within the team.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiers lab is seeking applications for the position of Principal Researcher – Generative AI to join their team.

The mission of the AI Frontiers lab is to expand the pareto frontier of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, efficiency, and safety through innovations in foundation models and learning agent platforms. Some of our projects include work on Small Language Models (e.g. Phi, Orca) and Multi-Agent AI (e.g. AutoGen).

We are seeking a Principal Researcher – Generative AI to join our team and lead efforts on the advancement of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies. As a Principal Researcher – Generative AI, you will play a crucial role in leading, developing, improving, and exploring the capabilities of Generative AI models. Your work will have a significant impact on the development of cutting-edge technologies, advancing state-of-the-art and providing practical solutions to real-world problems.  

Our ongoing research areas encompass but are not limited to:

Pre-training: especially of small language and multimodal models Alignment and Post-training: e.g., Instruction tuning and reinforcement learning from feedback Continual Learning: Enabling LLMs to evolve and adapt over time and learn from previous experiences human interactions Specialization: Tailoring LLMs to meet application-specific requirements Orchestration and multi-agent systems: automated orchestration between multiple agents incorporating human feedback and oversight

MSR offers a vibrant environment for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary, research, including access to diverse, real-world problems and data, opportunities for experimentation and real-world impact, an open publication policy, and close links to top academic institutions around the world.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.   

Responsibilities You will perform cutting-edge research in collaboration with other researchers, engineers, and product groups.
As a member of a word-class research organization, you will be a part of research breakthroughs in the field and will be given an opportunity to realize your ideas in products and services used worldwide. Embody our culture and values.

Location Bellevue, WA

Description Are you excited about developing generative AI and foundation models to revolutionize automation, robotics and computer vision? Are you looking for opportunities to build and deploy them on real problems at truly vast scale? At Amazon Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics we are on a mission to build high-performance autonomous systems that perceive and act to further improve our world-class customer experience - at Amazon scale.

This role is for the AFT AI team which has deep expertise developing cutting edge AI solutions at scale and successfully applying them to business problems in the Amazon Fulfillment Network. These solutions typically utilize machine learning and computer vision techniques, applied to text, sequences of events, images or video from existing or new hardware. The team is comprised of scientists, who develop machine learning and computer vision solutions, analytics, who evaluate the expected business impact for a project and the performance of these solutions, and software engineers, who provide necessary support such as annotation pipelines and machine learning library development.

We are looking for an Applied Scientist with expertise in computer vision. You will work alongside other CV scientists, engineers, product managers and various stakeholders to deploy vision models at scale across a diverse set of initiatives. If you are a self-motivated individual with a zeal for customer obsession and ownership, and are passionate about applying computer vision for real world problems - this is the team for you.

As a systems engineer for perception safety, your primary responsibility will be to define and ensure the safety performance of the perception system. You will be working in close collaboration with perception algorithm and sensor hardware development teams.

Location Madrid, ESP

Description Amazon's International Technology org in EU (EU INTech) is creating new ways for Amazon customers discovering Amazon catalog through new and innovative Customer experiences. Our vision is to provide the most relevant content and CX for their shopping mission. We are responsible for building the software and machine learning models to surface high quality and relevant content to the Amazon customers worldwide across the site.

The team, mainly located in Madrid Technical Hub, London and Luxembourg, comprises Software Developer and ML Engineers, Applied Scientists, Product Managers, Technical Product Managers and UX Designers who are experts on several areas of ranking, computer vision, recommendations systems, Search as well as CX. Are you interested on how the experiences that fuel Catalog and Search are built to scale to customers WW? Are interesting on how we use state of the art AI to generate and provide the most relevant content?

We are looking for Applied Scientists who are passionate to solve highly ambiguous and challenging problems at global scale. You will be responsible for major science challenges for our team, including working with text to image and image to text state of the art models to scale to enable new Customer Experiences WW. You will design, develop, deliver and support a variety of models in collaboration with a variety of roles and partner teams around the world. You will influence scientific direction and best practices and maintain quality on team deliverables.

Vancouver

Who we are Established in 2017, Wayve is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, driven by breakthroughs in Embodied AI. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic technologies empower vehicles to navigate complex environments effortlessly.

Supported by prominent investors, Wayve is advancing the transition from assisted to fully automated driving, making transportation safer, more efficient, and universally accessible. Join our world-class, multinational team of engineers and researchers as we push the boundaries of frontier AI and autonomous driving, creating impactful technologies and products on a global scale

Where you will have an impact Science is the team that is advancing our end-to-end autonomous driving research. The team’s mission is to accelerate our journey to AV2.0 and ensure the future success of Wayve by incubating and investing in new ideas that have the potential to become game-changing technological advances for the company.

As the first Research Manager in our Vancouver office, you will be responsible for managing & scaling a strong Science team in collaboration with other Wayve science teams in London and Mountain View. You will provide coaching and guidance to each of the researchers and engineers within your team and work with leaders across the company to ensure sustainable career growth for your team during a period of growth in the company. You will participate in our project-based operating model where your focus will be unlocking the potential of your team and its technical leaders to drive industry-leading impact. As part of your work, you will help identify the right projects to invest in, ensure the right allocation of resources to those projects, keep the team in good health, provide technical feedback to your team, share progress to build momentum, and build alignment and strong collaboration across the wider Science organisation. We are actively hiring and aim to substantially grow our research team over the next two years and you will be at the heart of this.

Challenges you will own Work closely with team members to develop career plans and growth trajectories based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses and their own aspirations. Work closely with project leads to ensure team members are having strong impact and are set up for success. Work closely with project leads and Science leadership to ensure projects are resourced in a way that balances the needs of the business with the needs of the individuals. Offer coaching and technical mentorship to direct reports (especially project leads). Bring technical & project management expertise and experience to help accelerate our progress and decision-making. Challenge the status quo (both technical and organisational/process). Prioritize effectively and keep processes lean and effective. Partner with leadership to maintain a culture of cross-boundary collaboration, impact, innovation, and health. Grow the team as a hiring manager, to bring in complementary, diverse skill sets and backgrounds. Anticipate the needs of the business 6-24 months out, identify areas where additional resources are needed or we need to grow new domain expertise, and pitch this to leadership for investment. Contribute to the day-to-day running of the Science team’s operations and larger collaborative efforts.

London

Who are we?

Our team is the first in the world to use autonomous vehicles on public roads using end-to-end deep learning, computer vision and reinforcement learning. Leveraging our multi-national world-class team of researchers and engineers, we’re using data to learn more intelligent algorithms to bring autonomy for everyone, everywhere. We aim to be the future of self-driving cars, learning from experience and data.

Where you’ll have an impact

We are currently looking for people with research expertise in AI applied to autonomous driving or similar robotics or decision making domain, inclusive, but not limited to the following specific areas:

Foundation models for robotics Model-free and model-based reinforcement learning Offline reinforcement learning Large language models Planning with learned models, model predictive control and tree search Imitation learning, inverse reinforcement learning and causal inference Learned agent models: behavioral and physical models of cars, people, and other dynamic agents You'll be working on some of the world's hardest problems, and able to attack them in new ways. You'll be a key member of our diverse, cross-disciplinary team, helping teach our robots how to drive safely and comfortably in complex real-world environments. This encompasses many aspects of research across perception, prediction, planning, and control, including:

How to leverage our large, rich, and diverse sources of real-world driving data How to architect our models to best employ the latest advances in foundation models, transformers, world models, etc. Which learning algorithms to use (e.g. reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning) How to leverage simulation for controlled experimental insight, training data augmentation, and re-simulation How to scale models efficiently across data, model size, and compute, while maintaining efficient deployment on the car You also have the potential to contribute to academic publications for top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, ICLR, CoRL etc. working in a world-class team to achieve this.

What you’ll bring to Wayve

Thorough knowledge of and 5+ years applied experience in AI research, computer vision, deep learning, reinforcement learning or robotics Ability to deliver high quality code and familiarity with deep learning frameworks (Python and Pytorch preferred) Experience leading a research agenda aligned with larger goals Industrial and / or academic experience in deep learning, software engineering, automotive or robotics Experience working with training data, metrics, visualisation tools, and in-depth analysis of results Ability to understand, author and critique cutting-edge research papers Familiarity with code-reviewing, C++, Linux, Git is a plus PhD in a relevant area and / or track records of delivering value through machine learning are a big plus. What we offer you

Attractive compensation with salary and equity Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time Bespoke learning and development opportunities Relocation support with visa sponsorship Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more!

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate for a fully funded postdoctoral researcher position to work in 3D computer graphics and 3D computer vision.

The successful candidate will join the 3D Graphics and Vision research group led by Prof. Binh-Son Hua at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland to work on topics related to generative AI in the 3D domain. The School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin is a collegiate, friendly, and research-intensive centre for academic study and research excellence. The School has been ranked #1 in Ireland, top 25 in Europe, and top 100 Worldwide (QS Subject Rankings 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

The postdoctoral researcher is expected to conduct fundamental research and publish in top-tier computer vision and computer graphics conferences (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, SIGGRAPH) and journals (TPAMI, IJCV). Other responsibilities include supporting graduate or undergraduate students with technical guidance and engagement in other research activities such as paper reviews, reading group, workshop organization, etc.

The start date of the position is August 01, 2024. Contract duration is 1 year with the option of renewing for a second year. The successful candidate will require the following skills and knowledge: • PhD in Computer Science or related fields; • Strong tracked records in 3D computer graphics, 3D computer vision; • Hands-on experience in training deep models and generative models is required; • Hands-on experience and relevant skills in computer graphics and computer vision application development such as OpenGL, OpenCV, CUDA, Blender is desirable; • Strong programming skills in C++, Python. Capability in implementing systems from research papers and open-source software. • Additional background in math, statistics, or physics is an advantage.

Applicants should provide the following information: • A comprehensive CV including a full list of publications; • The name and contact details of two referees. One of the referees should be the applicant’s PhD supervisor; • Two representative papers by the applicant. Interested candidates should email their applications to Binh-Son Hua (https://sonhua.github.io) directly. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.

Location San Francisco, CA

Description Amazon Music is an immersive audio entertainment service that deepens connections between fans, artists, and creators. From personalized music playlists to exclusive podcasts, concert livestreams to artist merch, Amazon Music is innovating at some of the most exciting intersections of music and culture. We offer experiences that serve all listeners with our different tiers of service: Prime members get access to all the music in shuffle mode, and top ad-free podcasts, included with their membership; customers can upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited for unlimited, on-demand access to 100 million songs, including millions in HD, Ultra HD, and spatial audio; and anyone can listen for free by downloading the Amazon Music app or via Alexa-enabled devices. Join us for the opportunity to influence how Amazon Music engages fans, artists, and creators on a global scale.

You will be managing a team within the Music Machine Learning and Personalization organization that is responsible for developing, training, serving and iterating on models used for personalized candidate generation for both Music and Podcasts.

Location Multiple Locations

Description

Qualcomm's Multimedia R&D and Standards Group is seeking candidates for Video Compression Research Engineer positions. You will be part of world-renowned team of video compression experts. The team develops algorithms, hardware architectures, and systems for state-of-the-art applications of classical and machine learning methods in video compression, video processing, point cloud coding and processing, AR/VR and computer vision use cases. The successful candidate for this position will be a highly self-directed individual with strong creative and analytic skills and a passion for video compression technology. You will work on, but not be limited to, developing new applications of classical and machine learning methods in video compression improving state-of-the-art video codecs.

We are considering candidates with various levels of experience. We are flexible on location and open to hiring anywhere, preferred locations are USA, Germany and Taiwan.

Responsibilities: Contribute to the conception, development, implementation, and optimization of new algorithms extending existing techniques and systems allowing improved video compression. Initiate ideas, design and implement algorithms for superior hardware encoder performance, including perceptually based bit allocation. Develop new algorithms for deep learning-based video compression solutions. Represent Qualcomm in the related standardization forums: JVET, MPEG Video, and ITU-T/VCEG. Document and present new algorithms and implementations in various forms, including standards contributions, patent applications, conference and journal publications, presentations, etc. Ideal candidate would have the skills/experience below: Expert knowledge of the theory, algorithms, and techniques used in video and image coding. Knowledge and experience of video codecs and their test models, such as ECM, VVC, HEVC and AV1. Experience with deep learning structures CNN, RNN, autoencoder etc. and frameworks like TensorFlow/PyTorch. Track record of successful research accomplishments demonstrated through published papers, and/or patent applications in the fields of video coding or video processing. Solid programming and debugging skills in C/C++. Strong written and verbal English communication skills, great work ethic, and ability to work in a team environment to accomplish common goals. PhD or Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics or similar field, or equivalent practical experience.

Qualifications: PhD or Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or similar fields. 1+ years of experience with programming language such as C, C++, MATLAB, etc.

Location Multiple Locations

Description The Qualcomm Cloud Computing team is developing hardware and software for Machine Learning solutions spanning the data center, edge, infrastructure, automotive market. Qualcomm’s Cloud AI 100 accelerators are currently deployed at AWS / Cirrascale Cloud and at several large organizations. We are rapidly expanding our ML hardware and software solutions for large scale deployments and are hiring across many disciplines.

We are seeing to hire for multiple machine learning positions in the Qualcomm Cloud team. In this role, you will work with Qualcomm's partners to develop and deploy best in class ML applications (CV, NLP, GenAI, LLMs etc) based on popular frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow and ONNX, that are optimized for Qualcomm's Cloud AI accelerators. The work will include model assessment of throughput, latency and accuracy, model profiling and optimization, end-to-end application pipeline development, integration with customer frameworks and libraries and responsibility for customer documentation, training, and demos. This candidate must possess excellent communication, leadership, interpersonal and organizational skills, and analytical skills.

This role will interact with individuals of all levels and requires an experienced, dedicated professional to effectively collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. The ideal candidate has either developed or deployed deep learning models on popular ML frameworks. If you have a strong appetite for technology and enjoy working in small, agile, empowered teams solving complex problems within a high energy, oftentimes chaotic environment then this is the role for you.

Minimum Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience. OR Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 3+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience. OR PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 2+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.

• 2+ years of experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc. • 1+ year of experience with debugging techniques.Key Responsibilities: Key contributor to Qualcomm’s Cloud AI GitHub repo and developer documentation. Work with developers in large organizations to Onboard them on Qualcomm’s Cloud AI ML stack improve and optimize their Deep Learning models on Qualcomm AI 100 deploy their applications at scale Collaborate and interact with internal teams to analyze and optimize training and inference for deep learning. Work on Triton, ExecuTorch, Inductor, TorchDynamo to build abstraction layers for inference accelerator. Optimize LLM/GenAI workloads for both scale-up (multi-SoC) and scale-out (multi-card) systems. Partner with product management, hardware/software engineering to highlight customer progress, gaps in product features etc.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Are you interested in developing and optimizing deep learning systems? Are you interested in designing novel technology to accelerate their training and serving for cutting edge models and applications? Do you want to scale large Artificial Intelligence models to their limits on massive supercomputers? Are you interested in being part of an exciting open-source library for deep learning systems? The DeepSpeed team is hiring!

Microsoft's DeepSpeed is an open-source library built on the PyTorch (machine learning framework) ecosystem that combines numerous research innovations and technology advancements to make deep learning efficient and easier to use. DeepSpeed can parallelize across thousands of GPUs and train models with trillions of parameters. Our OSS (Open Source Software) has powered many advanced models like MT-530B and BLOOM, and it supports unprecedented scale and speed for both training and inference.

The DeepSpeed team is also part of the larger Microsoft AI at Scale initiative, which is pioneering the next-generation AI capabilities that are scaled across the company’s products and AI platforms.

The DeepSpeed team is looking for a Senior Researcher in Redmond, WA with passion for innovations and for building high-quality systems that will make significant impact inside and outside of Microsoft. Our team is highly collaborative, innovative, and end-user obsessed. We are looking for candidates with systems skills and passionate about driving innovations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of deep learning systems. We value creativity, agility, accountability, and a desire to learn new technologies.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities Excels in one or more subareas and gains expertise in a broad area of research. Identifies and articulates problems in an area of research that are academically novel and may directly or indirectly impact business opportunities. Collaborates with other relevant researchers or research groups to contribute to or advance a research agenda. Researches and develops an understanding of the state-of-the-art insights, tools, technologies, or methods being used in the research community. Expands collaborative relationships with relevant product and business groups inside or outside of Microsoft and provides expertise or technology to them.