Data Analyst Job Description

Appealing to the best candidates for a data analyst role begins with crafting the best job description. Be direct about the expectations and goals for the role, and tell candidates how their work will have an immediate and positive impact on your company’s success. And don’t be shy about including a few details about the culture and values of your organization.

Avoid writing long paragraphs about the responsibilities and required skills. A strong post should be concise and simple, so be sure to differentiate between the nice-to-haves and the actual requirements for being successful in the data analyst role.

Sample data analyst job description

At [Company X], we’re proud to stand at the forefront of the Big Data revolution. Using the latest analytics tools and processes, we’re able to maximize our offerings and deliver unparalleled service and support. To help carry us even further, we’re searching for an experienced data analyst to join our team. The ideal candidate will be highly skilled in all aspects of data analytics, including mining, generation, and visualization. Additionally, this person should be committed to transforming data into readable, goal-oriented reports that drive innovation and growth.

Objectives of this role

Develop, implement, and maintain leading-edge analytics systems, taking complicated problems and building simple frameworks
Identify trends and opportunities for growth through analysis of complex datasets
Evaluate organizational methods and provide source-to-target mappings and information-model specification documents for datasets
Create best-practice reports based on data mining, analysis, and visualization
Evaluate internal systems for efficiency, problems, and inaccuracies, and develop and maintain protocols for handling, processing, and cleaning data
Work directly with managers and users to gather requirements, provide status updates, and build relationships

Responsibilities

Work closely with project managers to understand and maintain focus on their analytics needs, including critical metrics and KPIs, and deliver actionable insights to relevant decision-makers
Proactively analyze data to answer key questions for stakeholders or yourself, with an eye on what drives business performance, and investigate and communicate which areas need improvement in efficiency and productivity
Create and maintain rich interactive visualizations through data interpretation and analysis, with reporting components from multiple data sources
Define and implement data acquisition and integration logic, selecting an appropriate combination of methods and tools within the defined technology stack to ensure optimal scalability and performance of the solution
Develop and maintain databases by acquiring data from primary and secondary sources, and build scripts that will make our data evaluation process more flexible or scalable across datasets

Required skills and qualifications

Three or more years of experience mining data as a data analyst
Proven analytics skills, including mining, evaluation, and visualization
Technical writing experience in relevant areas, including queries, reports, and presentations
Strong SQL or Excel skills, with aptitude for learning other analytics tools

Preferred skills and qualifications

Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in mathematics, computer science, economics, or statistics
Experience with database and model design and segmentation techniques
Strong programming experience with frameworks, including XML, JavaScript, and ETL
Practical experience in statistical analysis through the use of statistical packages, including Excel, SPSS, and SAS
Proven success in a collaborative, team-oriented environment

How to write a data analyst job description