Data Analyst Job Description: Duties, Skills & Salary

Data analysts turn raw data into decisions: they pull and clean data with SQL, analyze it in Excel or Python, build dashboards in Tableau or Power BI, and explain what the numbers mean to people who will act on them. The deliverable is a decision made better, not a chart.

Duties vary by employer and shift, so always check the individual posting. Typical responsibilities:

• Write SQL to pull, join and aggregate data from company databases
• Clean and validate data; document definitions so numbers match across teams
• Build and maintain dashboards (Tableau, Power BI, Looker)
• Run recurring reports and automate them where possible
• Analyze trends, cohorts and funnels; investigate anomalies
• Support A/B tests: design checks, significance, readouts
• Present findings in plain language with a recommendation
• Partner with engineering on data quality and new tracking

• Bachelor's degree in analytics, statistics, business or related field - or a portfolio strong enough to replace it
• SQL proficiency (joins, aggregation, window functions) - almost always tested
• Excel fluency and one BI tool by name
• Python or R for cleaning and analysis is increasingly expected
• Statistics basics: distributions, significance, correlation vs causation

• Translating vague questions into precise queries
• Skepticism about dirty data
• Visualization that makes the point in one look
• Writing and presenting for non-analysts
• Prioritizing the analysis that changes a decision

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics groups data analysts with data scientists, who earned a median $120,230 a year (May 2025) with 35% growth projected for 2025 to 2035 - among the fastest of any occupation. Entry-level analyst and reporting roles commonly start well below that figure and rise quickly with SQL depth and business impact.

Adjust every number to your own record before you use these:

• Built 11 Tableau dashboards used weekly by 90 managers, replacing manual spreadsheet packs
• Found $480K a year in margin leakage by joining promotion, cost and sales data in SQL
• Automated 6 recurring reports in Python, saving 12 analyst hours a week
• Ran readouts for 20+ A/B tests; two pricing changes added $300K in annual revenue

Browse live analyst jobs on Ethic Leaf's IT sector page, and use the Data Analyst resume example and How to Become a Data Scientist guide to prepare. No service guarantees a job.

• What skills do data analyst jobs require? SQL first, then Excel, one BI tool and increasingly Python; the interview usually includes a live SQL or case exercise.
• Can you be a data analyst without a degree? Yes with a portfolio: 3 to 5 projects on real public data, a certificate such as Google Data Analytics, and strong SQL - see our Data Analyst resume example for how to present it.
• Data analyst vs data scientist: what is the difference? Analysts answer questions with existing data and dashboards; data scientists build models and predictions. Analyst is the normal entry point to both.