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 6 May 2026.

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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 43 42
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Business Analyst 2,020 1,408 1,880
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.24% 4.80% 4.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.60% 5.19% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,394 975 1,306
10th Percentile £358 £360 £378
25th Percentile £413 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £625
90th Percentile £688 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £457
% change year-on-year - -1.53% -3.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 16 9
10th Percentile £32.30 £22.42 -
25th Percentile £34.70 £25.26 £20.77
Median hourly rate £62.94 £32.82 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +91.79% +17.20% -53.53%
75th Percentile £82.66 £50.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £101.16 £54.90 £71.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.44 £31.52 £20.77
% change year-on-year +98.08% +51.76% -67.42%

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 43,929 27,125 40,035
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,003 17,719 26,065
10th Percentile £318 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.75% -2.10% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,852 1,052 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.36% -30.00% -4.76%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 +1 1,751 £500 -4.76% 433
London 0 1,048 £525 -8.70% 155
UK excluding London -2 799 £450 - 334
Work from Home -2 625 £500 -2.44% 150
North of England +5 277 £425 - 108
Midlands -8 165 £465 -2.11% 59
West Midlands +3 134 £475 -5.00% 38
Yorkshire +11 132 £475 +5.56% 46
South East -16 121 £500 +3.90% 74
North West -17 121 £400 -5.88% 32
Scotland -5 95 £436 +0.63% 19
South West -4 84 £450 -10.00% 29
North East +12 41 £425 +6.25% 31
East Midlands -26 30 £408 +4.49% 21
East of England -30 29 £500 +13.64% 31
Wales +1 22 £425 - 9
Northern Ireland +1 13 £550 +58.27% 8

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

For the 6 months to 6 May 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.

1 685 (33.91%) Agile
2 589 (29.16%) Stakeholder Management
3 588 (29.11%) Business Analysis
4 516 (25.54%) Requirements Gathering
5 500 (24.75%) User Stories
6 468 (23.17%) Workshop Facilitation
7 414 (20.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 311 (15.40%) User Acceptance Testing
9 299 (14.80%) Problem-Solving
10 291 (14.41%) Acceptance Criteria
11 278 (13.76%) JIRA
11 278 (13.76%) Security Cleared
12 253 (12.52%) Migration
13 231 (11.44%) SC Cleared
14 221 (10.94%) Confluence
15 216 (10.69%) SQL
16 189 (9.36%) Validation
17 184 (9.11%) Data Analysis
18 181 (8.96%) Microsoft
18 181 (8.96%) Process Improvement
19 175 (8.66%) Decision-Making
20 171 (8.47%) Data Modelling
21 168 (8.32%) Scrum
22 158 (7.82%) Degree
22 158 (7.82%) GAP Analysis
23 151 (7.48%) MS Visio
24 146 (7.23%) DevOps
25 145 (7.18%) Azure
26 136 (6.73%) Project Delivery
27 134 (6.63%) Power Platform

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
1 221 (10.94%) Confluence
2 27 (1.34%) SharePoint
3 18 (0.89%) SAS
4 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.15%) Appian
6 3 (0.15%) Camunda
7 2 (0.099%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.099%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.050%) Apache
8 1 (0.050%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.050%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.050%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 151 (7.48%) MS Visio
2 120 (5.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (2.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 55 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.25%) Notion
7 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.050%) CATIA
9 1 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.050%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
1 25 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 18 (0.89%) Aladdin
3 13 (0.64%) Endur
4 12 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
6 9 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
7 8 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.40%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.30%) Adobe Campaign
8 6 (0.30%) Loan IQ
8 6 (0.30%) Summit
9 5 (0.25%) Findur
9 5 (0.25%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 5 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.25%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 4 (0.20%) Fidessa
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 145 (7.18%) Azure
2 134 (6.63%) Power Platform
3 69 (3.42%) AWS
4 48 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
5 38 (1.88%) Dynamics 365
6 33 (1.63%) Microsoft 365
7 31 (1.53%) Lucidchart
8 24 (1.19%) Miro
9 23 (1.14%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 19 (0.94%) SaaS
11 18 (0.89%) Snowflake
12 17 (0.84%) GCP
13 16 (0.79%) GitHub
14 13 (0.64%) Power Automate
15 11 (0.54%) Azure Data Factory
15 11 (0.54%) Microsoft Copilot
15 11 (0.54%) Microsoft Purview
15 11 (0.54%) PowerApps
16 10 (0.50%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
17 8 (0.40%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.30%) Wireless
2 5 (0.25%) DNS
2 5 (0.25%) Internet
3 4 (0.20%) Firewall
3 4 (0.20%) Intranet
3 4 (0.20%) Network Security
4 3 (0.15%) Broadband
5 2 (0.099%) 802.11
5 2 (0.099%) Cisco ISE
5 2 (0.099%) LAN
5 2 (0.099%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.099%) VPN
5 2 (0.099%) WAN
5 2 (0.099%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.099%) Wireless Security
5 2 (0.099%) WLAN
5 2 (0.099%) X.25
6 1 (0.050%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.050%) NAS
6 1 (0.050%) TETRA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (5.45%) Power BI
2 41 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
3 38 (1.88%) Tableau
4 34 (1.68%) Metadata
5 18 (0.89%) Relational Database
6 7 (0.35%) Big Data
6 7 (0.35%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
7 6 (0.30%) RDBMS
8 3 (0.15%) BigQuery
8 3 (0.15%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle BI Publisher
8 3 (0.15%) Power Query
8 3 (0.15%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.099%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.099%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.099%) Data Vault
9 2 (0.099%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.099%) OLAP
10 1 (0.050%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 278 (13.76%) JIRA
2 15 (0.74%) Jenkins
3 12 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
4 8 (0.40%) Postman
5 5 (0.25%) Balsamiq
6 3 (0.15%) Toad
7 2 (0.099%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.099%) GitLab
8 1 (0.050%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.050%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.050%) Charles Proxy
8 1 (0.050%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.050%) Gemini Tracker
8 1 (0.050%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.050%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.050%) SonarQube
General
1 715 (35.40%) Social Skills
2 699 (34.60%) Finance
3 471 (23.32%) Analytical Skills
4 288 (14.26%) Banking
5 191 (9.46%) Public Sector
6 156 (7.72%) Documentation Skills
7 98 (4.85%) Retail
8 80 (3.96%) Front Office
9 72 (3.56%) Legal
10 68 (3.37%) Investment Banking
11 66 (3.27%) Presentation Skills
12 61 (3.02%) Influencing Skills
13 46 (2.28%) Marketing
14 43 (2.13%) Financial Institution
15 37 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
16 33 (1.63%) Back Office
16 33 (1.63%) Telecoms
17 27 (1.34%) Manufacturing
18 22 (1.09%) Law
19 20 (0.99%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (1.44%) REST
2 27 (1.34%) XML
3 17 (0.84%) JSON
4 16 (0.79%) SOAP
5 15 (0.74%) Middleware
5 15 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
6 13 (0.64%) ADO
7 12 (0.59%) Swagger
7 12 (0.59%) VML
8 10 (0.50%) OAuth
9 7 (0.35%) FHIR
9 7 (0.35%) JWT
9 7 (0.35%) OpenAPI
9 7 (0.35%) SailPoint
10 5 (0.25%) .NET
10 5 (0.25%) NumPy
10 5 (0.25%) Pandas
10 5 (0.25%) SAML
11 4 (0.20%) 802.1X
12 3 (0.15%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 175 (8.66%) Product Ownership
2 58 (2.87%) Onboarding
3 52 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
4 48 (2.38%) Derivative
5 47 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
6 42 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
7 38 (1.88%) Fixed Income
8 31 (1.53%) NHS
9 30 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 29 (1.44%) Data Structures
11 26 (1.29%) Credit Risk
12 25 (1.24%) Management Information System
13 24 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
14 20 (0.99%) Hedge funds
15 19 (0.94%) PMI
16 18 (0.89%) Market Risk
17 17 (0.84%) CMDB
18 16 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
19 15 (0.74%) Equities
19 15 (0.74%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 12 (0.59%) Linux
1 12 (0.59%) Windows
2 7 (0.35%) Unix
2 7 (0.35%) VMS
3 6 (0.30%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.20%) Android
5 2 (0.099%) AIX
5 2 (0.099%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.099%) Solaris
5 2 (0.099%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 685 (33.91%) Agile
2 589 (29.16%) Stakeholder Management
3 588 (29.11%) Business Analysis
4 516 (25.54%) Requirements Gathering
5 500 (24.75%) User Stories
6 468 (23.17%) Workshop Facilitation
7 414 (20.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 311 (15.40%) User Acceptance Testing
9 299 (14.80%) Problem-Solving
10 291 (14.41%) Acceptance Criteria
11 253 (12.52%) Migration
12 189 (9.36%) Validation
13 184 (9.11%) Data Analysis
14 181 (8.96%) Process Improvement
15 175 (8.66%) Decision-Making
16 171 (8.47%) Data Modelling
17 168 (8.32%) Scrum
18 158 (7.82%) GAP Analysis
19 146 (7.23%) DevOps
20 136 (6.73%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 216 (10.69%) SQL
2 48 (2.38%) Python
3 11 (0.54%) Korn
4 6 (0.30%) Java
4 6 (0.30%) JavaScript
4 6 (0.30%) VBA
5 5 (0.25%) R
6 3 (0.15%) C#
7 2 (0.099%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.050%) ABAP
8 1 (0.050%) C++
8 1 (0.050%) Groovy
8 1 (0.050%) Ruby
8 1 (0.050%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.050%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 278 (13.76%) Security Cleared
2 231 (11.44%) SC Cleared
3 158 (7.82%) Degree
4 58 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 52 (2.57%) CBAP
6 46 (2.28%) IIBA
7 29 (1.44%) PMI Certification
8 15 (0.74%) CSPO
9 14 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 13 (0.64%) DV Cleared
10 13 (0.64%) PMP
11 11 (0.54%) ISEB
12 10 (0.50%) Master's Degree
13 8 (0.40%) ACCA
14 7 (0.35%) CIMA
15 4 (0.20%) CFA
15 4 (0.20%) MBA
16 3 (0.15%) CAPM
16 3 (0.15%) FFIEC
16 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (5.74%) QA
2 113 (5.59%) Data Quality
3 56 (2.77%) GDPR
4 26 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 26 (1.29%) NIST
5 23 (1.14%) MiFID
6 22 (1.09%) Accessibility
7 21 (1.04%) EMIR
8 14 (0.69%) PMO
9 12 (0.59%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.54%) PSD2
11 10 (0.50%) GRC
11 10 (0.50%) ISO 8583
12 8 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) Basel III
13 7 (0.35%) HL7
13 7 (0.35%) PCI DSS
13 7 (0.35%) SLA
14 6 (0.30%) COBIT
System Software
1 8 (0.40%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.15%) Docker
3 1 (0.050%) RACF
3 1 (0.050%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 13 (0.64%) Ansible
2 8 (0.40%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.20%) Terraform
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (0.099%) Control-M
5 2 (0.099%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.050%) Autotask
6 1 (0.050%) Grafana
6 1 (0.050%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.050%) Kibana
6 1 (0.050%) RSA Archer
6 1 (0.050%) SCCM
6 1 (0.050%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 181 (8.96%) Microsoft
2 120 (5.94%) SAP
3 116 (5.74%) Salesforce
4 67 (3.32%) Oracle
5 66 (3.27%) ServiceNow
6 33 (1.63%) Murex
7 23 (1.14%) Workday
8 22 (1.09%) Databricks
9 21 (1.04%) Bloomberg
10 16 (0.79%) Pega
11 13 (0.64%) Adobe
12 12 (0.59%) Guidewire
12 12 (0.59%) Splunk
13 11 (0.54%) Sonatype
14 10 (0.50%) Avaloq
14 10 (0.50%) MuleSoft
14 10 (0.50%) OpenLink
15 9 (0.45%) Ariba
15 9 (0.45%) Sage
15 9 (0.45%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud