2027 Data analyst salary and career guide

Strong data skills can pay off for today’s technology professionals. According to the 2027 Salary Guide From Robert Half, salaries are becoming more competitive for roles that require expertise in data, AI, cybersecurity and systems modernization.

If you’re considering a career as a data analyst, the national midpoint starting salary in 2027 is $118,500. So what does the job actually involve, and what can you expect to earn? Below, we cover both, then look at where the role can lead and which certifications are worth your time.

Data analyst salary in 2027: What you need to know

What does a data analyst do?
Which data analyst skills are most valuable?
How much do data analysts make?
What is the data analyst career path?
Which data analyst certifications can help you advance?
Where data analysis goes next

What does a data analyst do?

Data analysts gather information from a company’s systems and turn it into reports and dashboards that managers use to make decisions. An analyst at an online retailer, for instance, might combine a year of order and returns data to show which product categories customers send back most often and what those returns cost the business. They also spend plenty of time with colleagues across the business, including understanding the questions those colleagues need data to answer and explaining what the results mean to senior leadership.

AI assistants built into analytics software can now build a chart or summarize a report when you describe what you need in plain English. You’re still the one who has to check that the underlying data is complete and that the AI got the answer right before anyone acts on it. If you’ve used AI tools in your analysis, our guide to AI skills for your resume and interview explains how to describe that experience in your job search.

Which data analyst skills are most valuable?

Employers most often look for these technical and business skills in data analysts:

SQL, the programming language used to retrieve and combine data from company databases

Data visualization platforms such as Power BI and Tableau, for building charts and dashboards

Cloud data platforms, including Snowflake and Google BigQuery, where many companies now store their data

ETL (extract, transform and load), which means moving data from source systems into a database and cleaning it so it can be analyzed

Business requirements gathering, which means finding out exactly what question a manager needs answered

How much do data analysts make?

Explore the Salary Guide

Nationally, the starting data analyst salary for 2027 depends on experience:

$96,250 for someone new to the role or with limited experience

$118,500 for someone with moderate experience who meets most of the job’s requirements

$138,500 for someone with extensive experience and advanced skills, often with specialized certifications or industry experience

Location can also affect a data analyst salary. Robert Half’s projected starting salaries for data analysts are 36.5% above the national figures in New York and 36% above them in San Francisco, while the Boise, Idaho, figures are 5% below the national levels. To find the figures for your city, use our Salary Calculator.

Industry plays a part as well. Employers in financial services, manufacturing, tech and IT, and pharma and biosciences need skilled technology professionals for projects such as data strategy and infrastructure modernization. Experience in one of those industries is worth mentioning when you discuss pay with a hiring manager.

See how data roles compare

Explore the Salary Guide

The Salary Guide covers 2027 starting salaries for more than 425 roles, from data analyst to data architect. Find the roles that interest you and check the pay at each level.

What is the data analyst career path?

People reach data analyst jobs by different routes. Some start in technology roles that involve handling data, such as technical support specialist or quality assurance (QA) analyst. Others build analysis skills in another field, such as marketing or operations, and switch to data work.

Once you’ve found your feet in the role, one natural next step is business intelligence (BI). BI analysts design and maintain the dashboards and reporting systems that staff across a company rely on for up-to-date figures. The national midpoint business intelligence analyst salary is $129,000, and BI developers, who build the reporting tools themselves, have a midpoint of $134,750. Analysts who want to manage people can work toward becoming a data analytics manager, leading a team of analysts and deciding which projects it takes on. That role has a national midpoint of $145,750.

Other analysts move toward engineering or data science:

Data engineers design and look after the databases that hold a company’s data, so analysts and data scientists can get results from them quickly.

Data scientists build statistical and machine learning models that predict outcomes, such as which customers are likely to cancel a subscription. The main data analyst vs. data scientist difference is that data analysts generally explain what has already happened, while data scientists use data to predict what may happen next. Our article on the data scientist career path covers the education and experience the move usually requires.

If you’re interested in moving into either field, skills that may warrant higher pay include:

Data architecture and infrastructure, or designing how an organization’s data is stored and connected

Data migration, or moving records from an old system to a new one without losing or corrupting them

Large language models, the technology behind generative AI tools

Machine learning, or building models that learn from past data to make predictions

National midpoints are $160,500 for data engineers and $158,750 for data scientists.

Which data analyst certifications can help you advance?

A certification can be a useful way to show employers you can use a particular tool or method, especially when you’re going for your first analyst role. Certifications can also justify higher pay when they validate expertise in areas such as data and AI. These five credentials are a good place to start:

The Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate is a nine-course beginner program on Coursera covering spreadsheets, SQL, Tableau, Python and AI tools.

Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (exam PL-300) shows you can prepare, model and visualize data in Power BI. You renew it each year with a free online assessment.

Tableau Certified Data Analyst tests your ability to build interactive dashboards in Tableau.

The Certified Data Professional (CDP), from the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP), covers data management, analytics and governance.

The IIBA Certification in Business Data Analytics (CBDA) combines business analysis with data skills and isn’t tied to one industry or software product.

For credentials in other areas of technology, such as cloud and security, see our list of 27 technology certifications that can boost your career and salary.

Where data analysis goes next

As AI tools take on more of the mechanical work of pulling and charting data, data analysts still need to check whether the underlying data is sound and explain what the results mean for the business. Those abilities are valuable across the career paths described above.

As a next step, look for opportunities in your current role or personal projects to validate a dataset, present a finding and recommend an action. Those are 3 experiences you can point to when applying for your next data role.

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