Natick, MA, United States

The Company Cognex is a global leader in the exciting and growing field of machine vision.

The Team: Vision Algorithms, Advanced Vision Technology This position is in the Vision Algorithms Team of Advanced Vision Technology group, which is responsible for designing and developing the most sophisticated machine vision tools in the world. We combine custom hardware, specialized lighting, optics, and world-class vision algorithms to create software systems that are used to analyze imagery (intensity, color, density, Z-data, ID barcodes, etc.), to detect, identify and localize objects, to make measurements, to inspect for defects, and to read encoded data. Technology development is critical to the overall business to expand areas of application, improve performance, discover new algorithms, and to make use of new hardware and processing power. Engineers in this group typically have experience with image analysis, machine vision, or signal processing.

Job Summary: The Vision Algorithms team is looking for well-rounded, intelligent, creative, and motivated summer or fall intern with a passion for results! You will work with our senior engineers and technical leads on projects that advance our software development infrastructure and enhance our key technologies and customer experience. You will get mentorship on tackling technical challenges and opportunities to build a solid foundation for your career in Software Engineering, or Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence.

Essential Functions: - Prototype and develop Vision (2D and ID) applications on top of Cognex products and technology. - Build internal tools or automated tests that can be used in software development or testing. - Understand our products and contribute to creating optimal solutions for customer applications in the automation industry. - High energy and motivated learner. Creative, motivated, and looking to work hard for a fast-moving company. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. - Strong programming skills in both C/C++ and Python are required. - Solid understanding of machine learning (ML) fundamentals and experience with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch required. - Demonstrated projects or internships in AI/ML domain during academic or professional tenure is highly desirable. - Experience with embedded systems, Linux systems, vision/image-processing and optics all valued. - Background in 2D vision, 3D camera calibration & multi camera systems are preferred.

Minimum education and work experience required: Pursuing a MS, or Ph.D. from a top engineering school in EE, CS, or equivalent.

If you would like to meet the hiring manager at CVPR to discuss this opportunity, please email ahmed.elbarkouky@cognex.com

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview We are seeking a Principal Research Engineer to join our organization and help improve steerability and control Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI systems. Our team currently develops Guidance, a fully open-source project that enables developers to control language models more precisely and efficiently with constrained decoding.

As a Principal Research Engineer, you will play a crucial role in advancing the frontier of constrained decoding and imagining new application programming interface (APIs) for language models. If you’re excited about links between formal grammars and generative AI, deeply understanding and optimizing LLM inference, enabling more responsible AI without finetuning and RLHF, and/or exploring fundamental changes to the “text-in, text-out” API, we’d love to hear from you. Our team offers a vibrant environment for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research. We have a long track record of open-source code and open publication policies, and you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate with world-leading experts across Microsoft and top academic institutions across 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 Develop and implement new constrained decoding research techniques for increasing LLM inference quality and/or efficiency. Example areas of interest include speculative execution, new decoding strategies (e.g. extensions to beam search), “classifier in the loop” decoding for responsible AI, improving AI planning, and explorations of attention-masking based constraints. Re-imagine the use and construction of context-free grammars (CFG) and beyond to fit Generative AI. Examples of improvements here include better tools for constructing formal grammars, extensions to Earley parsing, and efficient batch processing for constrained generation. Consideration of how these techniques are presented to developers – who may not be well versed in grammars and constrained generation -- in an intuitive, idiomatic programming syntax is also top of mind. Design principled evaluation frameworks and benchmarks for measuring the effects of constrained decoding on a model. Some areas of interest to study carefully include efficiency (token throughput and latency), generation quality, and impacts of constrained decoding on AI safety. Publish your research in top AI conferences and contribute your research advances to the guidance open-source project. Other

Embody our Culture and Values

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiers lab is seeking applications for the position of Senior Research Engineer – Generative AI to join their team in Redmond, WA and New York City, NY.

The mission of the AI Frontiers lab is to expand the pareto frontier of 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), foundation models for actions (e.g., in gaming, robotics, and Office productivity tools) and Multi-Agent AI (e.g. AutoGen).

We are seeking Senior Research Engineers to join our team and contribute to the advancement of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies. As a Research Engineer, you will play a crucial role in 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 language models, action models 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 models to meet application-specific requirements Orchestration and multi-agent systems: automated orchestration between multiple agents incorporating human feedback and oversight

Microsoft Research (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.

Embody our Culture and Values

Responsibilities As a Senior Research Engineer in AI Frontiers, you will design, develop, execute, and implement technology research projects 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.

Location Multiple Locations

Description Today, more intelligence is moving to end devices, and mobile is becoming the pervasive AI platform. Building on the smartphone foundation and the scale of mobile, Qualcomm envisions making AI ubiquitous—expanding beyond mobile and powering other end devices, machines, vehicles, and things. We are inventing, developing, and commercializing power-efficient on-device AI, edge cloud AI, and 5G to make this a reality.

Job Purpose & Responsibilities As a member of Qualcomm’s ML Systems Team, you will participate in two activities: Development and evolution of ML/AI compilers (production and exploratory versions) for efficient mappings of ML/AI algorithms on existing and future HW Analysis of ML/AI algorithms and workloads to drive future features in Qualcomm’s ML HW/SW offerings

Key Responsibilities: Contributing to the development and evolution of ML/AI compilers within Qualcomm Defining and implementing algorithms for mapping ML/AI workloads to Qualcomm HW Understanding trends in ML network design, through customer engagements and latest academic research, and how this affects both SW and HW design Creation of performance-driven simulation components (using C++, Python) for analysis and design of high-performance HW/SW algorithms on future SoCs Exploration and analysis of performance/area/power trade-offs for future HW and SW ML algorithms Pre-Silicon prediction of performance for various ML algorithms Running, debugging and analyzing performance simulations to suggest enhancements to Qualcomm hardware and software to tackle compute and system memory-related bottlenecks · Successful applications will work in cross-site, cross-functional teams.

Requirements: Demonstrated ability to learn, think and adapt in fast changing environment Detail-oriented with strong problem-solving, analytical and debugging skills Strong communication skills (written and verbal) Strong background in algorithm development and performance analysis is essential The following experiences would be significant assets: Strong object-oriented design principles Strong knowledge of C++ Strong knowledge of Python Experience in compiler design and development Knowledge of network model formats/platforms (eg. Pytorch, Tensorflow, ONNX) is an asset. On-silicon debug skills of high-performance compute algorithms · Knowledge of algorithms and data structures Knowledge of software development processes (revision control, CD/CI, etc.) · Familiarity with tools such as git, Jenkins, Docker, clang/MSVC Knowledge of computer architecture, digital circuits and event-driven transactional models/simulators

Excited to see you at CVPR! We’ll be at booth 1404. Come see us to talk more about roles.

Our team consists of people with diverse software and academic experiences. We work together towards one common goal: integrating the software, you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

As a Research Engineer for Optimization, you will focus on research and development related to the optimization of ML models on GPU’s or AI accelerators. You will use your judgment in complex scenarios and apply optimization techniques to a wide variety of technical problems. Specifically, you will:

• Research, prototype and evaluate state of the art model optimization techniques and algorithms
• Characterize neural network quality and performance based on research, experiment and performance data and profiling
• Incorporate optimizations and model development best practices into existing ML development lifecycle and workflow.
• Define the technical vision and roadmap for DL model optimizations
• Write technical reports indicating qualitative and quantitative results to colleagues and customers
• Develop, deploy and optimize deep learning (DL) models on various GPU and AI accelerator chipsets/platforms

Location Seattle, WA Palo Alto, CA

Description Amazon’s product search engine is one of the most heavily used services in the world, indexes billions of products, and serves hundreds of millions of customers world-wide. We are working on an AI-first initiative to continue to improve the way we do search through the use of large scale next-generation deep learning techniques. Our goal is to make step function improvements in the use of advanced multi-modal deep-learning models on very large scale datasets, specifically through the use of advanced systems engineering and hardware accelerators. This is a rare opportunity to develop cutting edge Computer Vision and Deep Learning technologies and apply them to a problem of this magnitude. Some exciting questions that we expect to answer over the next few years include: * How can multi-modal inputs in deep-learning models help us deliver delightful shopping experiences to millions of Amazon customers? * Can combining multi-modal data and very large scale deep-learning models help us provide a step-function improvement to the overall model understanding and reasoning capabilities? We are looking for exceptional scientists who are passionate about innovation and impact, and want to work in a team with a startup culture within a larger organization.

B GARAGE was founded in 2017 by two PhD graduates from Stanford University. After having spent over five years researching robotics, computer vision, aeronautics, and drone autonomy, the co-founders set their minds on building a future where aerial robots would become an integral part of our daily lives without anyone necessarily piloting them. Together, our common goal is to redefine the user experience of drones and to expand the horizon for the use of drones.

The B GARAGE team is always looking for an enthusiastic, proactive, and collaborative Robotics and Automation Engineers to support the launch of intelligent aerial robots and autonomously sustainable ecosystems.

If you're interested in joining the B Garage team but don't see a role open that fits your background, apply to the general application and we'll reach out to discuss your career goals.

Tokyo, Tokyo-to, Japan

Overview As one of the world's leading industrial research laboratories, Microsoft Research (MSR) has more than 1,000 researchers and engineers working across the globe. In the past 30 years, Microsoft scientists have not only carried out world-class computer science research, but also transferred the advanced technologies into our products and services that have changed millions of people’s lives and ensured that Microsoft is at the forefront of digital transformation.

Part of Microsoft Research, Microsoft Research Asia (MSR Asia), established in 1998, is a leading research lab with major sites in Beijing, Shanghai and Vancouver. Over the years, technologies developed by MSR Asia have made a significant impact within Microsoft and also around the world, and new, innovative technologies are constantly being born from the lab. As one of the world-class research labs, MSRA offers an exhilarating, supportive, open and inclusive environment for top talents to create the future through their disruptive and cutting-edge research. (More information about Microsoft Research Lab - Asia - Microsoft Research).

Along with business growth, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) is increasing its presence in Japan, and looking for a Principal Research Manager who specializes in AI with an emphasis on Embodied AI and Robotics, AI Model innovations (NLP, vision, multi-modality), Societal AI, Wireless sensing, and Wellbeing. This is a unique opportunity to lead an ambitious research agenda and work with various teams to explore new applications of those research areas.

Responsibilities •As a leading and accomplished expert in a broad research area (e.g., Embodied AI and Robotics, AI Model, Multimedia and Vision), has a comprehensive understanding of the relevant literature, research methods, and business and academic context. •Defines and articulates a clear long-term research vision that is in line with MSRA strategic focus and drive research agenda landing with planned schedule •As a local representative, fosters cooperative relationships with local governments, academic communities, industry partners and business groups within Microsoft to establish MSRA presence locally and support future growth •Creates synergy among MSRA research groups in multiple locations to enable collaboration and creativity • As a people manager, hires and retains top talents. Deliveries success through empowerment and accountability

Excited to see you at CVPR! We’ll be at booth 1404. Come see us to talk more about roles.

Our team consists of people with diverse software and academic experiences. We work together towards one common goal: integrating the software, you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

As a Sr. Fullstack Engineer, you will work on our platform engineering team playing a crucial role in enabling our research engineers to fine-tune our foundation models and streamline the machine learning process for our autonomous technology. You will work on developing products that empower our internal teams to maximize efficiency and innovation in our product. Specifically, you will:

• Build mission-critical tools for improving observability and scaling the entire machine-learning process.
• Use modern technologies to serve huge amounts of data, visualize key metrics, manage our data inventory, trigger backend data processing pipelines, and more.
• Work closely with people across the company to create a seamless UI experience.

Location Sunnyvale, CA

Description Are you fueled by a passion for computer vision, machine learning and AI, and are eager to leverage your skills to enrich the lives of millions across the globe? Join us at Ring AI team, where we're not just offering a job, but an opportunity to revolutionize safety and convenience in our neighborhoods through cutting-edge innovation.

You will be part of a dynamic team dedicated to pushing the boundaries of computer vision, machine learning and AI to deliver an unparalleled user experience for our neighbors. This position presents an exceptional opportunity for you to pioneer and innovate in AI, making a profound impact on millions of customers worldwide. You will partner with world-class AI scientists, engineers, product managers and other experts to develop industry-leading AI algorithms and systems for a diverse array of Ring and Blink products, enhancing the lives of millions of customers globally. Join us in shaping the future of AI innovation at Ring and Blink, where exciting challenges await!

Location: Sunnyvale, California, USA

Are you a gamer? Are you passionate about the cutting edge of foundation models and Multiodal LLM Agent for 3D world creation for future gaming?

Cybever.ai is on the lookout for an innovative AI Research Scientist to join our dynamic team and revolutionize the world of generative AI for 3D content.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Research and Development: Lead groundbreaking research in multimodal large language models (LLMs) and AI agents.
• 3D Content Creation: Develop advanced models and algorithms to create large-scale 3D assets and environments from text or images, enhancing our AI-powered creative suite.
• Collaboration and Integration: Work closely with the engineering team to integrate new AI capabilities into our existing products, ensuring they meet the needs of game developers, movie productions, and 3D artists.
• Innovation in AI: Stay ahead of the curve by publishing research, attending conferences, participating in open source projects, and collaborating with the global AI research community.

You're Probably a Match If You Have:

• Strong Research Background: Ph.D. or equivalent experience in AI, machine learning, computer vision, computer graphics, or related fields.
• Technical Skills: Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar frameworks.
• 3D Software Experience: Hands-on experience with tools like Blender, Houdini, Unreal Engine, or Unity, or a willingness to learn.
• Relevant Experience: Demonstrated work in computer vision or computer graphics, with a portfolio of projects or publications to showcase your expertise.

About Cybever:

Cybever, headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley and founded by ex-Googlers, is a pioneer in the generative AI space, transforming how game developers and artists create 3D content. Our innovative tools enable creating large-scale, high-fidelity, and interactive 3D environments in minutes, freeing up creators to focus on what they do best. With partnerships with industry leaders like Unreal Engine, we are at the forefront of integrating AI into the creative process, empowering developers worldwide to realize their visions easier and faster.

Employment Type:

• Full-Time Employment: This is a full-time position with potential for H1B and OPT sponsorship.
• International Opportunities: We are also open to hiring international contractors who meet our qualifications.
• Research Intern or Residency: Ideal for graduate students, this is a part-time or full-time opportunity to gain hands-on research experience while completing your studies.

Join us at Cybever and be a part of a team that's shaping the future of 3D creation. If you're ready to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI, we want to hear from you!

Excited to see you at CVPR! We’ll be at booth 1404. Come see us to talk more about roles.

Our team consists of people with diverse software and academic experiences. We work together towards one common goal: integrating the software, you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

As a Research Engineer on our Motion Planning team, you will work collaboratively to improve our models and iterate on novel research directions, sometimes in just days. We're looking for talented engineers who would enjoy applying their skills to deeply complex and novel AI problems. Specifically, you will:

• Apply and extend the Helm proprietary algorithmic toolkit for unsupervised learning and perception problems at scale
• Develop our planner behavior and trajectories in collaboration with software and autonomous vehicle engineers to deploy algorithms on internal and customer vehicle platforms
• Carefully execute the development and maintenance of tools used for deep learning experiments designed to provide new functionality for customers or address relevant corner cases in the system as a whole

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.

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 We are seeking an experienced researcher to be a founding member of our Vancouver team! We are prioritising someone with experience actively participating in AI projects applied to autonomous driving or similar robotics or decision-making domains, inclusive, but not limited to the following specific areas:

Foundation models for robotics or embodied AI 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: behavioural and physical models of cars, people, and other dynamic agents Challenges you will own 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, evaluating and incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into our workflows. 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 Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate research findings into scalable, production-level solutions. 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, contributing to the scientific community and establishing Wayve as a leader in the field.

What you will bring to Wayve Proven track record of research in one or more of the topics above demonstrated through deployed applications or publications. Strong programming skills in Python, with experience in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, numpy, pandas, etc. Experience bringing a machine learning research concept through the full ML development cycle Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently as well as in a team environment. Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced, innovative, interdisciplinary team environment. Desirable: Experience bringing an ML research concept through to production and at scale PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field

What we offer you The chance to be part of a truly mission driven organisation and an opportunity to shape the future of autonomous driving. Unlike our competitors, Wayve is still relatively small and nimble, giving you the chance to make a huge impact Competitive compensation and benefits A dynamic and fast-paced work environment in which you will grow every day - learning on the job, from the brightest minds in our space, and with support for more formal learning opportunities too

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.