Like every other large technology company, Microsoft has spent the past few months navigating its way through the COVID-19 crisis. Its employees are working from home, even though CEO Satya Nadella isn’t a fan of remote work as a concept. Meanwhile, demand for the company’s cloud-based apps and services remains strong as remote workers across the nation try to replicate their office workflows from their living rooms. 

In light of all that, it’s worth examining which jobs and skills Microsoft is hiring for. Fortunately, we have Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes job postings from across the country. For the purposes of this little study, we’re examining only the past 60 days’ worth of Microsoft job postings. Here are some of the most popular:  

As you might expect (and consistent with hiring at other big tech firms at the moment), Microsoft is primarily on the hunt for software developers and engineers; in addition, there’s a heavy emphasis on hiring various kinds of managers.

We can dig for more insight by analyzing the technical skills popping up in these job postings:

It stands to reason that Microsoft is interested in technologists who know their way around Azure, the company’s sprawling cloud platform; same with the need for Microsoft C# and PowerShell skills. As with other tech firms, there’s a heavy emphasis on popular programming languages such as Python and JavaScript, which is likewise no surprise—new apps must be built, and legacy software maintained, in those languages. 

At the most recent BUILD conference, Microsoft showed off a number of upcoming initiatives, including Linux GUI apps and an attempt to (finally) solve some major Windows fragmentation issues. In the meantime, Nadella’s decision a long time ago to emphasize cloud-based productivity apps and Azure is seemingly paying off, as consumers and businesses rely on these more than ever to stay productive during widespread COVID-19 lockdowns.