Data Analyst
What the work is
Gathers, processes, analyses and interprets data using data analytical tools. Communicates findings through reports and data visualisations, such as charts and infographics.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Sets up processes to securely collect, store, process and validate data
- Evaluates the accuracy and reliability of data
- Analyses and interprets data to produce relevant statistics to describe and infer trends and patterns, solve problems and answer data-related queries
- Applies data analytics and visualisation techniques to gain business insights
- Prepares presentations and/or writes reports to communicate findings and support strategic decision-making
- Implements and/or follows data management processes to ensure data is used ethically and in compliance with data governance standards and strategies
- May write custom scripts and code in programming language to conduct analytical tasks
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in the data team of a fictional online grocery delivery business. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A messy pile of numbers becomes one chart that makes everyone say 'oh, that's why'
- A tool you built saves the warehouse team a whole morning every week
- You catch a data error before it reaches the people who would have acted on it
Hard days
- Someone senior loves a chart that you know does not tell the whole story
- Hours of cleaning data that nobody will ever see, followed by a request to redo it
- A pipeline breaks at three in the morning and the dashboards go blank
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 223231, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.