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 1 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 39 48
Rank change year-on-year -15 +9 -10
Contract jobs requiring a Business Analyst 2,091 1,636 1,563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.90% 5.00% 4.05%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.22% 5.48% 4.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,366 1,122 1,122
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £438 £473
% change year-on-year +8.57% -7.46% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 11 13
10th Percentile £28.03 £27.21 £19.92
25th Percentile £34.19 £31.49 £26.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £34.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.76% -20.00% -21.30%
75th Percentile £78.55 £54.65 £68.00
90th Percentile £104.00 £72.50 £76.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.19 £45.90 £34.80
% change year-on-year +4.98% +31.92% -20.90%

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 49,606 29,880 35,937
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,580 18,873 22,662
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% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,581 1,559 1,838
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.33 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 -19 1,754 £520 +2.72% 714
London -15 1,022 £550 -4.35% 370
UK excluding London -6 851 £475 +8.57% 471
Work from Home -6 663 £500 -4.76% 264
North of England -15 262 £463 +8.82% 106
Midlands -4 165 £467 +24.40% 83
South East -9 163 £500 +5.26% 121
West Midlands +9 125 £475 - 60
North West -33 119 £440 +3.53% 55
Scotland +4 112 £463 +8.82% 40
Yorkshire -12 105 £475 +16.14% 35
South West +6 82 £480 +3.34% 64
North East -17 39 £525 +20.00% 17
East Midlands -22 38 £460 +28.49% 23
East of England -12 33 £475 +5.56% 28
Wales -2 29 £448 -3.76% 7
Northern Ireland +5 14 £444 -15.48% 23

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

For the 6 months to 1 September 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.

1 725 (34.67%) Stakeholder Management
2 712 (34.05%) Business Analysis
3 701 (33.52%) Agile
4 652 (31.18%) Requirements Gathering
5 585 (27.98%) Workshop Facilitation
6 567 (27.12%) User Stories
7 408 (19.51%) User Acceptance Testing
8 407 (19.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 333 (15.93%) Acceptance Criteria
10 251 (12.00%) JIRA
10 251 (12.00%) SQL
11 244 (11.67%) Problem-Solving
12 242 (11.57%) Validation
13 233 (11.14%) Process Improvement
14 227 (10.86%) Data Analysis
15 222 (10.62%) Migration
16 203 (9.71%) AI
17 194 (9.28%) Decision-Making
18 183 (8.75%) Microsoft
19 176 (8.42%) Scrum
20 173 (8.27%) Confluence
20 173 (8.27%) Data Modelling
21 172 (8.23%) Security Cleared
22 171 (8.18%) Azure
23 163 (7.80%) Degree
24 152 (7.27%) Translating Business Requirements
25 147 (7.03%) Requirements Workshops
26 142 (6.79%) GAP Analysis
27 140 (6.70%) Project Delivery
28 138 (6.60%) 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
1 173 (8.27%) Confluence
2 27 (1.29%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.29%) CMS
4 5 (0.24%) Jupyter
4 5 (0.24%) SAS
5 3 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.14%) Camunda
6 2 (0.096%) Apache
6 2 (0.096%) Appian
6 2 (0.096%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.048%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.048%) Headless CMS
7 1 (0.048%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.048%) Moodle
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.048%) PowerExchange
7 1 (0.048%) Totara
Applications
1 112 (5.36%) MS Visio
2 76 (3.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 31 (1.48%) 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
7 1 (0.048%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 33 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 31 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.91%) Salesforce CRM
4 14 (0.67%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.48%) Endur
5 10 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 9 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
7 7 (0.33%) Maximo
8 6 (0.29%) Findur
8 6 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 6 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.29%) SAP HR
9 5 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.24%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.19%) Actimize
10 4 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 4 (0.19%) HFM
10 4 (0.19%) SAP SCM
10 4 (0.19%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 171 (8.18%) Azure
2 131 (6.26%) Power Platform
3 78 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
4 57 (2.73%) AWS
5 52 (2.49%) Dynamics 365
6 31 (1.48%) SaaS
7 29 (1.39%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 23 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
8 23 (1.10%) Snowflake
9 20 (0.96%) Lucidchart
9 20 (0.96%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 17 (0.81%) Miro
11 13 (0.62%) Entra ID
11 13 (0.62%) GCP
11 13 (0.62%) SuccessFactors
12 12 (0.57%) Microsoft Copilot
13 11 (0.53%) Power Automate
14 10 (0.48%) Microsoft Purview
15 9 (0.43%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (0.38%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.33%) Network Security
2 6 (0.29%) Intranet
2 6 (0.29%) Wireless
3 4 (0.19%) DNS
4 3 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.096%) 802.11
5 2 (0.096%) Cisco ISE
5 2 (0.096%) Internet
5 2 (0.096%) VPN
5 2 (0.096%) Wireless Security
5 2 (0.096%) WLAN
6 1 (0.048%) Extranet
6 1 (0.048%) HTTP
6 1 (0.048%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.048%) SNMP
6 1 (0.048%) SONET
6 1 (0.048%) SSH
6 1 (0.048%) SSL
6 1 (0.048%) TETRA
6 1 (0.048%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.36%) Power BI
2 46 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
3 35 (1.67%) Metadata
4 31 (1.48%) Data Lake
5 25 (1.20%) Tableau
6 13 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 9 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
8 8 (0.38%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (0.38%) Electronic Patient Records
9 7 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 6 (0.29%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 6 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 5 (0.24%) Data Mining
11 5 (0.24%) SQL Server
12 4 (0.19%) Big Data
12 4 (0.19%) GIS
12 4 (0.19%) MongoDB
12 4 (0.19%) RDBMS
13 3 (0.14%) Looker
13 3 (0.14%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 251 (12.00%) JIRA
2 4 (0.19%) Balsamiq
3 3 (0.14%) Eclipse
4 2 (0.096%) GitLab
4 2 (0.096%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.048%) SonarQube
General
1 741 (35.44%) Finance
2 645 (30.85%) Social Skills
3 446 (21.33%) Analytical Skills
4 286 (13.68%) Banking
5 169 (8.08%) Documentation Skills
6 159 (7.60%) Public Sector
7 135 (6.46%) Retail
8 100 (4.78%) Front Office
9 79 (3.78%) Investment Banking
10 75 (3.59%) Legal
11 58 (2.77%) Presentation Skills
12 49 (2.34%) Manufacturing
13 45 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
14 38 (1.82%) Local Government
14 38 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
15 36 (1.72%) Back Office
15 36 (1.72%) Financial Institution
16 32 (1.53%) Billing
17 28 (1.34%) Marketing
18 27 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
2 19 (0.91%) Middleware
3 18 (0.86%) XML
4 16 (0.77%) JSON
5 13 (0.62%) ADO
6 8 (0.38%) SailPoint
7 7 (0.33%) FHIR
8 5 (0.24%) STL
8 5 (0.24%) Terraform
9 4 (0.19%) 802.1X
9 4 (0.19%) NumPy
9 4 (0.19%) Pandas
9 4 (0.19%) VML
10 3 (0.14%) EDI
10 3 (0.14%) FIX Protocol
10 3 (0.14%) OpenAPI
10 3 (0.14%) REST
10 3 (0.14%) Swagger
11 2 (0.096%) Gherkin
11 2 (0.096%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 206 (9.85%) Product Ownership
2 90 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 61 (2.92%) Derivative
4 55 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
5 43 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
6 37 (1.77%) Fixed Income
7 36 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 36 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
8 35 (1.67%) Data Structures
9 34 (1.63%) Management Information System
10 30 (1.43%) NHS
11 29 (1.39%) Credit Risk
12 24 (1.15%) Operational Technology
13 22 (1.05%) Equities
14 21 (1.00%) Reference Data
15 20 (0.96%) Hedge funds
15 20 (0.96%) Market Risk
16 19 (0.91%) AI Agents
17 18 (0.86%) FMCG
18 15 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 8 (0.38%) Windows
2 4 (0.19%) Android
2 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
2 4 (0.19%) Unix
3 1 (0.048%) Linux
3 1 (0.048%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 725 (34.67%) Stakeholder Management
2 712 (34.05%) Business Analysis
3 701 (33.52%) Agile
4 652 (31.18%) Requirements Gathering
5 585 (27.98%) Workshop Facilitation
6 567 (27.12%) User Stories
7 408 (19.51%) User Acceptance Testing
8 407 (19.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 333 (15.93%) Acceptance Criteria
10 244 (11.67%) Problem-Solving
11 242 (11.57%) Validation
12 233 (11.14%) Process Improvement
13 227 (10.86%) Data Analysis
14 222 (10.62%) Migration
15 203 (9.71%) AI
16 194 (9.28%) Decision-Making
17 176 (8.42%) Scrum
18 173 (8.27%) Data Modelling
19 152 (7.27%) Translating Business Requirements
20 147 (7.03%) Requirements Workshops
Programming Languages
1 251 (12.00%) SQL
2 35 (1.67%) Python
3 14 (0.67%) Korn
4 8 (0.38%) Java
5 3 (0.14%) R
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%) 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
1 172 (8.23%) Security Cleared
2 163 (7.80%) Degree
3 138 (6.60%) SC Cleared
4 37 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 37 (1.77%) IIBA
5 33 (1.58%) CBAP
6 27 (1.29%) PMI Certification
7 17 (0.81%) ACCA
7 17 (0.81%) CIMA
7 17 (0.81%) PMP
8 12 (0.57%) FFIEC
8 12 (0.57%) ISEB
9 11 (0.53%) DV Cleared
10 7 (0.33%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.29%) CSPO
11 6 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 6 (0.29%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.19%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 115 (5.50%) QA
3 40 (1.91%) GDPR
4 29 (1.39%) NIST
5 22 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 22 (1.05%) MiFID
5 22 (1.05%) PMO
6 20 (0.96%) EMIR
7 17 (0.81%) Accessibility
8 15 (0.72%) GRC
9 13 (0.62%) COBIT
10 11 (0.53%) IFRS
10 11 (0.53%) ISO 20022
11 10 (0.48%) Basel III
12 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.29%) HL7
13 6 (0.29%) Solvency II
14 5 (0.24%) GxP
15 4 (0.19%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (0.67%) 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 3 (0.14%) HP ALM
1 3 (0.14%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.048%) Autotask
2 1 (0.048%) Control-M
2 1 (0.048%) Jamf Pro
2 1 (0.048%) Microsoft Intune
2 1 (0.048%) RSA Archer
2 1 (0.048%) SCCM
Vendors
1 183 (8.75%) Microsoft
2 133 (6.36%) SAP
3 131 (6.26%) Salesforce
4 81 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 71 (3.40%) Oracle
6 33 (1.58%) Murex
7 26 (1.24%) Databricks
8 22 (1.05%) Workday
9 17 (0.81%) CyberArk
10 16 (0.77%) Ariba
11 12 (0.57%) Bloomberg
11 12 (0.57%) Guidewire
11 12 (0.57%) IBM
11 12 (0.57%) Pega
12 11 (0.53%) Charles River
13 10 (0.48%) OpenLink
14 9 (0.43%) IFS
15 8 (0.38%) Avaloq
15 8 (0.38%) Planon
16 7 (0.33%) Calypso