Business Analyst Contract Job Trends

Business Analyst (BA)
UK

The median Business Analyst (BA) daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 50 38
Rank change year-on-year +1 -12 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Business Analyst 1,705 1,279 2,082
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.59% 4.03% 4.81%
As % of the Job Titles category 5.02% 4.34% 5.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,206 942 1,516
10th Percentile £350 £363 £386
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.68% -2.14% +0.96%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £615
90th Percentile £700 £731 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 11 7
10th Percentile £25.00 - £20.77
25th Percentile £27.97 £25.26 £23.51
Median hourly rate £35.75 £31.52 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.40% +0.06% +35.72%
75th Percentile £67.32 £63.65 £60.66
90th Percentile £87.25 £80.75 £68.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.69 £27.13 £44.17
% change year-on-year +90.54% -38.58% +260.53%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,942 29,468 40,286
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.41% 92.82% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,457 18,028 26,771
10th Percentile £300 £296 £279
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £616 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,003 894 1,815
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £18.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.69
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -20.13% +19.68%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £64.45
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +46.55%

Business Analyst
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Business Analyst' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Business Analyst job vacancy trend in the UK

Business Analyst
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Business Analyst job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Business Analyst job vacancies in the UK

Business Analyst
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Business Analyst over the 6 months to 18 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Business Analyst in the UK

Business Analyst
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Business Analyst job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Business Analyst job vacancies in the UK

Business Analyst
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Business Analyst over the 6 months to 18 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Business Analyst in the UK

Business Analyst
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Business Analyst within the UK over the 6 months to 18 January 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +3 1,505 £500 -4.76% 314
London +3 934 £525 -4.55% 102
UK excluding London +18 641 £450 - 296
Work from Home 0 559 £500 - 142
North of England +7 208 £410 -4.65% 65
Midlands +8 136 £425 -11.69% 55
South East -2 101 £475 - 101
Yorkshire +7 98 £450 - 22
North West -11 89 £390 -8.24% 33
West Midlands -5 85 £475 -5.00% 42
South West +36 82 £463 -2.63% 30
Scotland -5 62 £450 +5.88% 13
East Midlands +14 51 £358 -14.76% 13
North East +17 35 £425 +6.25% 12
Wales +20 24 £425 +2.41% 13
East of England -6 23 £500 - 14
Northern Ireland -2 13 £525 +82.61% 7

Business Analyst Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 January 2026, Business Analyst contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Business Analyst in the job title.

1 637 (37.36%) Agile
2 565 (33.14%) Stakeholder Management
3 526 (30.85%) Business Analysis
4 457 (26.80%) Requirements Gathering
5 375 (21.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 369 (21.64%) Workshop Facilitation
7 360 (21.11%) User Stories
8 280 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
9 249 (14.60%) JIRA
10 238 (13.96%) User Acceptance Testing
11 225 (13.20%) Migration
12 201 (11.79%) SQL
13 186 (10.91%) Confluence
14 185 (10.85%) Security Cleared
15 173 (10.15%) Acceptance Criteria
16 164 (9.62%) Data Analysis
17 163 (9.56%) Scrum
18 160 (9.38%) Degree
19 159 (9.33%) Process Improvement
20 155 (9.09%) SC Cleared
21 153 (8.97%) Microsoft
22 142 (8.33%) Project Delivery
23 140 (8.21%) Waterfall
24 139 (8.15%) Change Management
25 138 (8.09%) Decision-Making
26 137 (8.04%) Data Modelling
27 135 (7.92%) Validation
28 133 (7.80%) GAP Analysis
29 128 (7.51%) Project Management
30 127 (7.45%) Business Intelligence

Business Analyst Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 186 (10.91%) Confluence
2 29 (1.70%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.65%) SAS
4 4 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 4 (0.23%) CMS
5 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
5 3 (0.18%) Camunda
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.059%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.059%) Appian
7 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.059%) Mule
7 1 (0.059%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 124 (7.27%) MS Visio
2 114 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 60 (3.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 53 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
5 10 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.29%) Trello
7 4 (0.23%) Autodesk Inventor
7 4 (0.23%) Notion
8 1 (0.059%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.059%) Sketch
8 1 (0.059%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 36 (2.11%) Endur
2 26 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.70%) Aladdin
4 12 (0.70%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.65%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
6 7 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.23%) Loan IQ
7 4 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.18%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 3 (0.18%) FIS Private Capital Suite
8 3 (0.18%) Markit EDM
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 3 (0.18%) SAP HR
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.12%) Shopify
9 2 (0.12%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 125 (7.33%) Power Platform
2 88 (5.16%) Azure
3 66 (3.87%) AWS
4 33 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
5 32 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (1.82%) Lucidchart
7 29 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
7 29 (1.70%) SaaS
8 21 (1.23%) Miro
9 18 (1.06%) GitHub
10 17 (1.00%) GCP
11 16 (0.94%) Snowflake
12 14 (0.82%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 13 (0.76%) Power Automate
14 11 (0.65%) PowerApps
15 10 (0.59%) Entra ID
16 8 (0.47%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
16 8 (0.47%) SuccessFactors
17 7 (0.41%) Apigee
17 7 (0.41%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.23%) Firewall
2 3 (0.18%) Internet
2 3 (0.18%) Network Security
3 2 (0.12%) Broadband
3 2 (0.12%) Cisco IPT
3 2 (0.12%) Intranet
3 2 (0.12%) NAS
3 2 (0.12%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.12%) WAN
3 2 (0.12%) X.25
4 1 (0.059%) ATM
4 1 (0.059%) DNS
4 1 (0.059%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.059%) LAN
4 1 (0.059%) Softphone
4 1 (0.059%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (6.28%) Power BI
2 41 (2.40%) Tableau
3 29 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
4 20 (1.17%) Metadata
5 13 (0.76%) SQL Server
6 7 (0.41%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.29%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.29%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.29%) Power Query
8 4 (0.23%) Amazon Athena
8 4 (0.23%) Big Data
8 4 (0.23%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.23%) Star Schema
9 3 (0.18%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.18%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.18%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.18%) SAP BW
10 2 (0.12%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.12%) GIS
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 249 (14.60%) JIRA
2 16 (0.94%) Jenkins
3 15 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
4 6 (0.35%) Postman
5 4 (0.23%) Git
6 2 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.12%) Charles Proxy
6 2 (0.12%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.059%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.059%) Axure RP
7 1 (0.059%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.059%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.059%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.059%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.059%) Toad
General
1 690 (40.47%) Social Skills
2 593 (34.78%) Finance
3 379 (22.23%) Analytical Skills
4 251 (14.72%) Banking
5 172 (10.09%) Public Sector
6 121 (7.10%) Documentation Skills
7 65 (3.81%) Retail
8 64 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
9 61 (3.58%) Legal
10 56 (3.28%) Front Office
11 55 (3.23%) Investment Banking
12 53 (3.11%) Presentation Skills
13 46 (2.70%) Back Office
13 46 (2.70%) Telecoms
14 42 (2.46%) Marketing
15 31 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
16 28 (1.64%) Local Government
17 24 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 24 (1.41%) Manufacturing
18 22 (1.29%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (1.94%) REST
2 26 (1.52%) XML
3 16 (0.94%) SOAP
4 13 (0.76%) JSON
5 11 (0.65%) SailPoint
6 10 (0.59%) OAuth
7 9 (0.53%) Swagger
8 8 (0.47%) ADO
8 8 (0.47%) VML
9 7 (0.41%) .NET
9 7 (0.41%) SAML
10 6 (0.35%) JWT
10 6 (0.35%) Middleware
10 6 (0.35%) OpenAPI
10 6 (0.35%) RESTful
11 5 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
12 4 (0.23%) FHIR
12 4 (0.23%) Gherkin
12 4 (0.23%) HTML
12 4 (0.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 133 (7.80%) Product Ownership
2 75 (4.40%) Onboarding
3 43 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
4 39 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
5 37 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 32 (1.88%) PMI
7 30 (1.76%) Fixed Income
8 28 (1.64%) Data Structures
8 28 (1.64%) Management Information System
9 26 (1.52%) Derivative
9 26 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 25 (1.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 23 (1.35%) Credit Risk
12 20 (1.17%) Equities
13 19 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.11%) NHS
14 17 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (0.88%) Data Centre
16 14 (0.82%) CMDB
17 13 (0.76%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 17 (1.00%) Linux
2 10 (0.59%) Windows
3 6 (0.35%) VMS
4 2 (0.12%) Android
4 2 (0.12%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.12%) Solaris
4 2 (0.12%) Unix
5 1 (0.059%) AIX
5 1 (0.059%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.059%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 637 (37.36%) Agile
2 565 (33.14%) Stakeholder Management
3 526 (30.85%) Business Analysis
4 457 (26.80%) Requirements Gathering
5 375 (21.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 369 (21.64%) Workshop Facilitation
7 360 (21.11%) User Stories
8 280 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
9 238 (13.96%) User Acceptance Testing
10 225 (13.20%) Migration
11 173 (10.15%) Acceptance Criteria
12 164 (9.62%) Data Analysis
13 163 (9.56%) Scrum
14 159 (9.33%) Process Improvement
15 142 (8.33%) Project Delivery
16 140 (8.21%) Waterfall
17 139 (8.15%) Change Management
18 138 (8.09%) Decision-Making
19 137 (8.04%) Data Modelling
20 135 (7.92%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 201 (11.79%) SQL
2 46 (2.70%) Python
3 8 (0.47%) JavaScript
4 7 (0.41%) Korn
5 6 (0.35%) VBA
6 5 (0.29%) Java
6 5 (0.29%) R
7 3 (0.18%) C#
7 3 (0.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.12%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.059%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.059%) Bash
9 1 (0.059%) C++
9 1 (0.059%) COBOL
9 1 (0.059%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 185 (10.85%) Security Cleared
2 160 (9.38%) Degree
3 155 (9.09%) SC Cleared
4 61 (3.58%) CBAP
5 44 (2.58%) PMI Certification
6 34 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 34 (1.99%) IIBA
7 16 (0.94%) Master's Degree
7 16 (0.94%) PMP
8 15 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
9 13 (0.76%) CSPO
9 13 (0.76%) ISEB
10 8 (0.47%) CFA
11 7 (0.41%) DV Cleared
12 5 (0.29%) ACCA
12 5 (0.29%) MBA
13 4 (0.23%) CIMA
14 3 (0.18%) AWS Certification
14 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (5.40%) QA
2 69 (4.05%) Data Quality
3 55 (3.23%) GDPR
4 30 (1.76%) MiFID
5 18 (1.06%) EMIR
6 16 (0.94%) PSD2
7 15 (0.88%) Accessibility
8 12 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.59%) GRC
9 10 (0.59%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.53%) ISO 8583
10 9 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.53%) PMO
11 8 (0.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 8 (0.47%) NIST
12 7 (0.41%) Basel III
12 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.41%) SEPA
13 6 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
13 6 (0.35%) IFRS
System Software
1 9 (0.53%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.059%) Docker
2 1 (0.059%) Hyper-V
2 1 (0.059%) Virtual Desktop
2 1 (0.059%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 16 (0.94%) Ansible
2 6 (0.35%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (0.12%) SCCM
5 1 (0.059%) Control-M
5 1 (0.059%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 1 (0.059%) Terraform
Vendors
1 153 (8.97%) Microsoft
2 100 (5.87%) Salesforce
3 89 (5.22%) SAP
4 54 (3.17%) Oracle
5 36 (2.11%) ServiceNow
6 27 (1.58%) Murex
7 20 (1.17%) Bloomberg
8 18 (1.06%) MuleSoft
9 15 (0.88%) Google
10 14 (0.82%) OpenLink
11 13 (0.76%) Adobe
11 13 (0.76%) Pega
11 13 (0.76%) Sonatype
12 12 (0.70%) Workday
13 9 (0.53%) OneTrust
14 8 (0.47%) CyberArk
14 8 (0.47%) eFront
14 8 (0.47%) Guidewire
15 7 (0.41%) Ariba
15 7 (0.41%) Avaloq