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 August 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 41 45
Rank change year-on-year -13 +4 -7
Contract jobs requiring a Business Analyst 2,086 1,636 1,616
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.89% 4.98% 4.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.21% 5.45% 4.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,385 1,115 1,149
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £636 £625
90th Percentile £675 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £444 £461
% change year-on-year +6.98% -3.74% -2.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 11 14
10th Percentile £28.03 £26.80 £20.09
25th Percentile £34.19 £29.61 £27.52
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% +2.70% -18.86%
75th Percentile £78.55 £54.65 £69.31
90th Percentile £104.00 £72.50 £77.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.19 £48.75 £34.80
% change year-on-year -1.16% +40.11% -42.01%

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 49,538 30,006 36,016
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.28% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,704 18,935 23,189
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,506 1,542 1,988
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.56 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.02
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.87% +22.28%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -18 1,752 £520 +1.96% 490
London -14 1,015 £550 -4.35% 232
UK excluding London -2 857 £475 +6.98% 343
Work from Home -8 654 £500 -4.31% 193
North of England -15 264 £470 +10.33% 99
Midlands -3 171 £466 +24.20% 57
South East -14 170 £500 +2.56% 86
West Midlands +16 131 £475 - 35
North West -26 123 £438 +2.10% 48
Scotland +14 113 £450 +4.65% 23
Yorkshire -22 103 £475 +16.14% 29
South West -4 74 £473 +0.75% 45
North East -9 39 £525 +5.00% 24
East Midlands -24 38 £460 +28.49% 22
East of England -14 32 £475 +5.56% 19
Wales -5 28 £448 -3.76% 4
Northern Ireland +7 14 £444 -15.48% 13

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

For the 6 months to 18 August 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.

1 705 (33.80%) Stakeholder Management
2 692 (33.17%) Agile
3 688 (32.98%) Business Analysis
4 619 (29.67%) Requirements Gathering
5 577 (27.66%) Workshop Facilitation
6 560 (26.85%) User Stories
7 420 (20.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 409 (19.61%) User Acceptance Testing
9 324 (15.53%) Acceptance Criteria
10 254 (12.18%) JIRA
11 248 (11.89%) SQL
12 245 (11.74%) Problem-Solving
13 237 (11.36%) Validation
14 228 (10.93%) Process Improvement
15 222 (10.64%) Data Analysis
15 222 (10.64%) Migration
16 198 (9.49%) AI
17 192 (9.20%) Decision-Making
18 183 (8.77%) Microsoft
19 178 (8.53%) Confluence
20 177 (8.49%) Security Cleared
21 176 (8.44%) Data Modelling
22 172 (8.25%) Scrum
23 168 (8.05%) Azure
24 155 (7.43%) Degree
25 149 (7.14%) Translating Business Requirements
26 141 (6.76%) SC Cleared
27 137 (6.57%) Business Intelligence
28 136 (6.52%) GAP Analysis
29 134 (6.42%) DevOps

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
1 178 (8.53%) Confluence
2 30 (1.44%) SharePoint
3 7 (0.34%) CMS
4 6 (0.29%) SAS
5 5 (0.24%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.14%) Camunda
7 2 (0.096%) Apache
7 2 (0.096%) Appian
7 2 (0.096%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.096%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.048%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.048%) Moodle
8 1 (0.048%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.048%) PowerExchange
8 1 (0.048%) Totara
Applications
1 111 (5.32%) MS Visio
2 79 (3.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 33 (1.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 29 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.19%) Notion
6 3 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.048%) Trello
Business Applications
1 33 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 15 (0.72%) Salesforce CRM
4 12 (0.58%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.48%) Endur
5 10 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 9 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
7 8 (0.38%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.29%) Actimize
9 6 (0.29%) Findur
9 6 (0.29%) Maximo
9 6 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 6 (0.29%) SAP HR
10 5 (0.24%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 5 (0.24%) SAP FI
11 4 (0.19%) SAP CO
11 4 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
11 4 (0.19%) Summit
11 4 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 168 (8.05%) Azure
2 131 (6.28%) Power Platform
3 74 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
4 52 (2.49%) AWS
5 49 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
6 29 (1.39%) SaaS
7 28 (1.34%) Microsoft 365
7 28 (1.34%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 23 (1.10%) Snowflake
9 18 (0.86%) Lucidchart
10 17 (0.81%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 14 (0.67%) GCP
11 14 (0.67%) Microsoft Copilot
12 13 (0.62%) Miro
12 13 (0.62%) SuccessFactors
13 12 (0.58%) Entra ID
13 12 (0.58%) Microsoft Purview
14 11 (0.53%) Power Automate
15 10 (0.48%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (0.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 11 (0.53%) Network Security
2 6 (0.29%) DNS
2 6 (0.29%) Wireless
3 5 (0.24%) Intranet
4 3 (0.14%) Firewall
5 2 (0.096%) 802.11
5 2 (0.096%) Cisco ISE
5 2 (0.096%) Internet
5 2 (0.096%) LAN
5 2 (0.096%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.096%) VPN
5 2 (0.096%) WAN
5 2 (0.096%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.096%) Wireless Security
5 2 (0.096%) WLAN
6 1 (0.048%) 5G
6 1 (0.048%) Broadband
6 1 (0.048%) PBX
6 1 (0.048%) SNMP
6 1 (0.048%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.27%) Power BI
2 48 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (1.58%) Metadata
4 30 (1.44%) Data Lake
5 23 (1.10%) Tableau
6 12 (0.58%) Relational Database
7 8 (0.38%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (0.38%) Electronic Patient Records
7 8 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
8 7 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (0.29%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 6 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 5 (0.24%) Data Mining
10 5 (0.24%) SQL Server
11 4 (0.19%) Big Data
11 4 (0.19%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.19%) RDBMS
12 3 (0.14%) GIS
12 3 (0.14%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.14%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 254 (12.18%) JIRA
2 4 (0.19%) Balsamiq
3 3 (0.14%) Eclipse
3 3 (0.14%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.096%) GitLab
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.048%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.048%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 733 (35.14%) Finance
2 644 (30.87%) Social Skills
3 463 (22.20%) Analytical Skills
4 276 (13.23%) Banking
5 172 (8.25%) Documentation Skills
6 159 (7.62%) Public Sector
7 139 (6.66%) Retail
8 99 (4.75%) Front Office
9 81 (3.88%) Legal
10 74 (3.55%) Investment Banking
11 55 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
12 50 (2.40%) Manufacturing
13 45 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
14 37 (1.77%) Organisational Skills
15 36 (1.73%) Local Government
16 34 (1.63%) Back Office
17 31 (1.49%) Billing
17 31 (1.49%) Financial Institution
18 30 (1.44%) Marketing
19 27 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (1.34%) Oracle Fusion
2 20 (0.96%) Middleware
3 19 (0.91%) XML
4 16 (0.77%) JSON
5 13 (0.62%) ADO
6 8 (0.38%) SailPoint
7 7 (0.34%) FHIR
8 6 (0.29%) REST
9 5 (0.24%) STL
10 4 (0.19%) 802.1X
10 4 (0.19%) NumPy
10 4 (0.19%) Pandas
10 4 (0.19%) VML
11 3 (0.14%) EDI
11 3 (0.14%) FIX Protocol
11 3 (0.14%) SOAP
12 2 (0.096%) Microsoft Graph
12 2 (0.096%) OpenAPI
12 2 (0.096%) SAP ALE
12 2 (0.096%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 198 (9.49%) Product Ownership
2 82 (3.93%) Onboarding
3 58 (2.78%) Derivative
4 50 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
5 48 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
6 38 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
7 36 (1.73%) Data Structures
8 35 (1.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 35 (1.68%) Management Information System
9 31 (1.49%) Fixed Income
10 29 (1.39%) NHS
11 25 (1.20%) Credit Risk
11 25 (1.20%) Operational Technology
12 22 (1.05%) Hedge funds
13 20 (0.96%) Market Risk
14 19 (0.91%) AI Agents
14 19 (0.91%) Reference Data
15 18 (0.86%) Equities
15 18 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (0.81%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 10 (0.48%) Windows
2 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.19%) Android
3 4 (0.19%) Unix
4 2 (0.096%) Mac OS
4 2 (0.096%) VMS
5 1 (0.048%) Linux
5 1 (0.048%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 705 (33.80%) Stakeholder Management
2 692 (33.17%) Agile
3 688 (32.98%) Business Analysis
4 619 (29.67%) Requirements Gathering
5 577 (27.66%) Workshop Facilitation
6 560 (26.85%) User Stories
7 420 (20.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 409 (19.61%) User Acceptance Testing
9 324 (15.53%) Acceptance Criteria
10 245 (11.74%) Problem-Solving
11 237 (11.36%) Validation
12 228 (10.93%) Process Improvement
13 222 (10.64%) Data Analysis
13 222 (10.64%) Migration
14 198 (9.49%) AI
15 192 (9.20%) Decision-Making
16 176 (8.44%) Data Modelling
17 172 (8.25%) Scrum
18 149 (7.14%) Translating Business Requirements
19 137 (6.57%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 248 (11.89%) SQL
2 37 (1.77%) Python
3 14 (0.67%) Korn
4 9 (0.43%) Java
5 3 (0.14%) R
6 2 (0.096%) C#
6 2 (0.096%) PL/SQL
6 2 (0.096%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.096%) VBA
7 1 (0.048%) ABAP
7 1 (0.048%) C
7 1 (0.048%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.048%) Groovy
7 1 (0.048%) JavaScript
7 1 (0.048%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.048%) Ruby
7 1 (0.048%) SOQL
7 1 (0.048%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 177 (8.49%) Security Cleared
2 155 (7.43%) Degree
3 141 (6.76%) SC Cleared
4 39 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 36 (1.73%) IIBA
6 33 (1.58%) CBAP
7 27 (1.29%) PMI Certification
8 17 (0.81%) PMP
9 14 (0.67%) ACCA
9 14 (0.67%) CIMA
9 14 (0.67%) DV Cleared
9 14 (0.67%) FFIEC
9 14 (0.67%) ISEB
10 7 (0.34%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.34%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.29%) CSPO
11 6 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 4 (0.19%) Azure Certification
12 4 (0.19%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 117 (5.61%) QA
3 40 (1.92%) GDPR
4 37 (1.77%) NIST
5 26 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (1.05%) MiFID
6 22 (1.05%) PMO
7 20 (0.96%) EMIR
8 18 (0.86%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.72%) COBIT
9 15 (0.72%) GRC
10 14 (0.67%) ISO 20022
11 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.38%) IFRS
11 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.38%) SLA
12 7 (0.34%) Basel III
12 7 (0.34%) HL7
12 7 (0.34%) SEPA
12 7 (0.34%) Solvency II
System Software
1 13 (0.62%) Active Directory
2 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.096%) Docker
5 1 (0.048%) RACF
Systems Management
1 6 (0.29%) Terraform
2 3 (0.14%) HP ALM
2 3 (0.14%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.096%) Jamf Pro
3 2 (0.096%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.048%) Ansible
4 1 (0.048%) Autotask
4 1 (0.048%) Control-M
4 1 (0.048%) RSA Archer
4 1 (0.048%) SCCM
Vendors
1 183 (8.77%) Microsoft
2 134 (6.42%) SAP
3 127 (6.09%) Salesforce
4 85 (4.07%) ServiceNow
5 64 (3.07%) Oracle
6 31 (1.49%) Murex
7 24 (1.15%) Databricks
8 22 (1.05%) Workday
9 16 (0.77%) CyberArk
10 14 (0.67%) Ariba
10 14 (0.67%) Pega
11 12 (0.58%) Guidewire
12 11 (0.53%) Bloomberg
12 11 (0.53%) IBM
13 10 (0.48%) Planon
13 10 (0.48%) Zscaler
14 9 (0.43%) Charles River
14 9 (0.43%) IFS
14 9 (0.43%) OpenLink
15 7 (0.34%) Calypso