DAData Analyst
DA
Career

Data Analyst

By the numbers
Typical pay
$120,230 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+33.5% by 2034
People in this job
262K
Figures shown for ·closest of 2 O*NET occupations
The work
A day, hour by hour
08:30
KPI pulse check

Scan overnight dashboards for anything that looks broken or off.

09:00
Team standup

Sync with stakeholders. Surface blockers, confirm today's priorities.

09:20
SQL deep dive

Write queries to pull last week's sales data — filter, join, verify.

11:00
Data cleaning

Raw export has nulls and duplicates; fix what's fixable, flag the rest.

12:30
Anomaly call

Sales dropped 18% Tuesday — real trend or a data pipeline glitch?

13:30
Dashboard build

Wire new charts into the weekly report; test if a non-analyst gets it.

15:00
Stakeholder readout

Present findings to marketing — data says X, not what they hoped.

16:00
Requirements meeting

Sit with product to scope next analysis — what question actually needs answering?

16:45
Wrap & document

Log query logic and decisions so future-you isn't lost next month.

Things you do
  • Dig into data to find patterns that explain business results.
  • Write SQL queries to pull exactly the data you need.
  • Build dashboards so teams can track their numbers at a glance.
  • Translate messy findings into clear recommendations for non-technical people.
  • Clean and fix raw data so it's actually trustworthy to analyze.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Is this data pattern a real trend, or just noise I'm reading into?
  • Should I flag this data as dirty, or is it close enough to use?
  • Do I give the stakeholder the answer they want, or the one the data actually shows?
  • Is this chart clear enough for a non-technical audience, or am I oversimplifying?
  • Should I dig deeper into this anomaly now, or ship the report on time?
Education Pathways · how you get there
100 in 100 went the college route · 0 in 100 found another way in None, typically
Education mapped from O*NET:Business Intelligence Analysts · 93% related
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