data analyst
Data analysts import, inspect, clean, transform, validate, model, or interpret collections of data with regard to the business goals of the company. They ensure that the data sources and repositories provide consistent and reliable data. Data analysts use different algorithms and IT tools as demanded by the situation and the current data. They might prepare reports in the form of visualisations such as graphs, charts, and dashboards.
data analyst data analysts import, inspect, clean, transform, validate, model, or interpret collections of data with regard to the business goals of the company. They ensure that the data sources and repositories provide consistent and reliable data. The role shows moderate AI exposure (0.62 on a 0-1 scale) — some tasks are being automated but the role adapts. The most in-demand skills for the role include digital data processing, information structure, business intelligence, data mining, documentation types.
Pay in the UK
UK: median £60,288 a year for IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (ONS ASHE 2025, full-time)
Middle half of full-time jobs: £45,860 to £81,932 a year
UK jobs are grouped differently; this is the closest UK occupation group (ONS SOC 2020 2133). ONS rates this estimate precise. 2025 provisional figures; ONS revises them a year later. Source: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Open Government Licence)
Pay in India (occupation group)
Average monthly earnings of salaried employees in the occupation group “Professionals” in India, from the Government of India's Periodic Labour Force Survey (January–December 2025). It covers everyone in this group, not only data analyst, and it is not US pay converted to rupees.
Source: MoSPI (Government of India), Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2025, Table 51 — average wage/salary earnings of regular wage/salaried employees, NCO-2015 division 2. Official India data gives one average per occupation group: there are no official India figures for single careers, experience levels or cities. Read the report
Top skills
What you'd actually do
- Analyze, manipulate, or process large sets of data using statistical software.
- Apply feature selection algorithms to models predicting outcomes of interest, such as sales, attrition, and healthcare use.
- Apply sampling techniques to determine groups to be surveyed or use complete enumeration methods.
- Clean and manipulate raw data using statistical software.
- Compare models using statistical performance metrics, such as loss functions or proportion of explained variance.
- Create graphs, charts, or other visualizations to convey the results of data analysis using specialized software.
Tools & technology you'd use
Frequently asked questions
What does data analyst do?
Data analysts import, inspect, clean, transform, validate, model, or interpret collections of data with regard to the business goals of the company. They ensure that the data sources and repositories provide consistent and reliable data. Data analysts use different algorithms and IT tools as demanded by the situation and the current data. They might prepare reports in the form of visualisations such as graphs, charts, and dashboards.
What skills does data analyst need?
The most in-demand skills for this role include digital data processing, information structure, business intelligence, data mining, documentation types, visual presentation techniques. These are the skills O*NET identifies as most important for competent performance.
Will AI replace data analyst?
Our AI-durability model gives data analyst a score of 0.62 on a 0-1 scale (higher = more exposure). That places it at moderate AI exposure — some tasks are being automated but the role adapts. Learning to work with AI tools rather than against them is the path forward.