Job Placement · Technology · Data Analyst
No federal occupation is called data analyst. The work is scattered across the data scientist and computer systems analyst codes, while the market prices analyst, scientist and engineer work $49,044 apart on job descriptions that are often interchangeable. BEG settles which of the three you are hiring before sourcing, then places permanently at $9,381 to $11,257.
See your exact placement price - no call required
See pricing before you talk to anyone. No demo gate, no obligation, and no co-employment.
TL;DR
Data analyst reqs fail more often than they should because the title has no occupation underneath it. The federal classification splits this work across the data scientist code and the computer systems analyst code, so there is no single wage series to benchmark against, and self-reported market data puts analyst, scientist and engineer roughly $49,044 apart. Job descriptions that blend all three are priced at the cheapest and staffed by nobody. BEG settles the definition, the reporting line and the pipeline ownership before sourcing, then places at $9,381 to $11,257 against $21,170 to $26,463 on a percentage.
Three Jobs Wearing One Title
Because the advert usually describes three separate jobs and pays for one of them. There is no federal occupation by this name, so nothing external corrects the drift.
Settle The Definition First
The dividing lines are about ownership rather than tooling. Each row here is a real seat with its own market price, and a req that spans more than one will be filled by nobody.
| If the person is expected to | The seat is really | What the market pays for it |
|---|---|---|
| Query data that already exists and turn it into a decision somebody makes | Data analyst. The pipeline is an input to their job, not part of it. | Roughly $100,956 self-reported, with the nearest federal anchor at the $105,850 computer systems analyst median. |
| Build and maintain the extraction and transformation layer everyone else queries | Data engineer. This is software engineering with a data specialism, and the interview should look like an engineering interview. | Roughly $150,000 self-reported in the United States, the highest of the three. |
| Create, validate and retrain models, and be accountable for their accuracy | Data scientist, covered by SOC 15-2051 at a $120,230 federal median. | Roughly $145,000 self-reported, against a federal band running from $67,240 to $199,130. |
| Keep the database available, performant and backed up | Database administrator, a separate occupation again. | A $104,620 median for administrators and $139,500 for architects, per BLS. Bundling this into an analyst req loses both pools. |
BEG runs this table in the discovery call because the most expensive version of this hire is the one where the definition changes at offer stage. The neighbouring seats are covered at data scientist and mid-level software engineer. Full scope on the technology placement service page.
Milestone Billing Against A Percentage
A contingency recruiter charges a share of first-year salary, which on a title this loosely defined means the invoice depends on which of the three jobs the req turns out to be. At the $105,850 computer systems analyst median, 20 percent is $21,170 and 25 percent is $26,463. If the seat drifts toward data engineering during the search and lands nearer $150,000, the same percentages become $30,000 and $37,500 without anybody renegotiating. BEG prices this as a Tier II engagement at $9,381 to $11,257, fixed when the scope is agreed, which also means the scope has to be agreed.
What A Misdefined Analyst Seat Costs
The expensive failure here is not a vacancy, it is a filled seat doing the wrong job. An analyst hired at analyst money and then asked to build pipelines will do it badly, because it is not their training, and will leave inside a year because it is not what they came for. You then pay a second search, and the reporting that depended on them stops working in the meantime because nobody else knows which numbers were trustworthy. Settling the definition costs one conversation. Getting it wrong costs two searches and a quarter of reporting nobody trusts.
Who Employs The Analyst
All three produce reports. They differ on whether the accumulated understanding of your own data belongs to you afterwards, and on whose payroll the analyst sits.
| Model | Who employs the analyst | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytics agency or consultancy | The agency | Project fee or monthly retainer against a defined deliverable | You need one report built properly once, and nobody internally will need to change it later. |
| Contract or staff augmentation firm | The firm | Hourly or daily rate plus margin for the engagement | A migration or a reporting rebuild has a hard end date and no ongoing ownership requirement. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Tier II milestone fee of $9,381 to $11,257, fixed once scope is agreed | The reporting has to keep working, the questions keep changing, and somebody needs to know which numbers can be trusted. |
BEG is not a staffing agency, does not sell project analytics and does not place contractors, so a retainer is not an option we hold. For a genuinely one-off question an agency is the better purchase. What rarely works is an agency retained indefinitely while nobody internally learns the data. Related seat: IT support and help desk recruiting.
FAQ
A data analyst is a Tier II search at $9,381 to $11,257 on milestone billing. Benchmarked to the $105,850 BLS median for computer systems analysts, the closest published occupation, a 20 to 25 percent contingency fee on the same permanent hire would be $21,170 to $26,463.
No, and that is the root of most of the confusion. The work sits across several codes. O*NET files business intelligence analysts as a specialisation under SOC 15-2051, the data scientist code, while a great deal of analyst work maps more closely to computer systems analysts at SOC 15-1211. There is no single wage series to point a budget at.
About $49,044 between the ends. US respondents to the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey reported median total compensation of $100,956 for data or business analyst, $145,000 for data scientist and $150,000 for data engineer. Three titles that job descriptions routinely blur, priced as three different jobs.
Because job descriptions copy each other. A req headed data analyst that asks for pipeline construction, model deployment and stakeholder reporting is describing at least two of those three jobs, and it is almost always paying for the cheapest one. Candidates qualified for the duties will not apply at the salary, and candidates who apply cannot do the duties.
Interrogating data that already exists and turning it into decisions. Where they start writing the extraction and transformation layer, you have a data engineer. Where they start building and validating predictive models, you have a data scientist. The test is not tooling, it is whether the pipeline is an input to their job or part of it.
No. A staffing or analytics consultancy employs the analyst and bills you for their time, and the understanding of your reporting leaves when the engagement does. BEG places a permanent data analyst onto your payroll, employed by you, so the knowledge of which numbers are trustworthy stays in the company.
Computer systems analysts, at a $105,850 median for May 2025 with employment projected to grow 8 percent from 2025 to 2035 and about 32,900 openings a year. It is not a perfect match, but it is a published federal series covering work that overlaps heavily with the analyst seat, and a defensible number to build a band from.
It decides whether they can start, not whether they will succeed. Every credible candidate can write a join. What separates them is whether they ask why a number moved before reporting that it moved. Test that by handing them a real chart from your own reporting with an unexplained step change in it.
It is a different occupation with different pay. BLS reports database administrators at a $104,620 median and database architects at $139,500 for May 2025. Administrators keep the data available and performant; analysts interpret it. Reqs that combine both are asking one person to hold two jobs and usually lose both candidate pools.
23 to 35 days from discovery call to signed offer on average, based on isolved placement data, with an 86 percent fill rate on active searches. The step that adds time here is almost always an internal disagreement about which of the three data titles the seat really is, which is better settled before sourcing.
Wherever the decisions are made, with a dotted line to wherever the data lives. An analyst embedded in a function and starved of data access is ineffective. An analyst inside the data team with no exposure to the decisions produces accurate reports nobody uses. Say which structure you are choosing in the advert, because candidates have strong and informed preferences.
A 45-day replacement guarantee and 50 percent off a repeat search for the same seat. The candid observation is that analysts who leave early usually leave because the job turned out to be manual report production. If that is genuinely the work, say so in the advert and price it honestly rather than discovering it in month three.
Staffing the data function? See data scientist, mid-level software engineer, engineering manager and director of engineering, or all technology placement.
More technology placement
Ready?
Answer a few questions, get your exact number in about 90 seconds. No call required, no commitment.
See your exact placement price - no call required
