The Trump administration today announced it’s in the process of hiring an “elite corps of engineers” to join federal agencies and work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects.

The corps of about 1,000 engineers and other tech specialists will form the “U.S. Tech Force.” Throughout the two-year program, they will work in collaboration with companies such as Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Nvidia Corp., Salesforce Inc., Oracle Corp., Palantir Technologies Inc. and OpenAI Group PBC, among other big names in tech.

The personnel, who will be earning somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000, will have the opportunity to work with said companies after their two-year service with the Tech Force is finished. The program will not have a “political mission.”

The work will be focused on improving government technology capabilities, an area where the federal government could be lacking after scores of workers were fired or resigned at the start of Trump’s term. “We have some resources, but certainly it’s an area that we need to build out more,” Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, which is leading the program, told reporters today.

The news comes just days after Trump signed an executive order that will limit the ability of states to regulate AI, a move the White House says is necessary to make the U.S. competitive with China. The Tech Force puts even more focus on modernizing U.S. government infrastructure as it competes with China’s own tech ambitions.

“Bringing Silicon Valley operators into federal agencies is a practical way to compress timelines,” Darren Kimura, chief executive of AI Squared, told SiliconANGLE. “Tech Force concept is directionally right if it is mission-driven: Embed talent directly inside agencies with clear mandates, measurable deliverables and the authority to modernize data and workflows.”

This is not the first time the U.S. government has attempted to encourage specialists from the public sector to bring their acumen to federal agencies. The U.S. Digital Service was established under the Obama administration to bring experienced technologists into government for fixed, short-term stints. On his first day in office, Trump repurposed the group to house the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, triggering an exodus of staff in the early months of his administration, either through dismissals or resignations.

Critics have asked if there might be a conflict of interest when private employees finish their two years with the government and return to their corporate jobs, after working on government systems and accessing potentially very sensitive data.

“We feel like we’ve run down all the various conflict issues and don’t believe that that’s actually going to be an impediment to getting people here,” Kupor told NextGov. “The huge benefit to the government will be getting people who are very skilled in the private sector at managing engineering teams.”

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