Skills
What skills do business intelligence jobs ask for?
On this page
Short answer
SQL comes first. Of 74 live business intelligence roles on realanalystjobs.com on 11 October 2026, 57 name the tools they want, and the most common are SQL (96%), Tableau (65%) and Python (60%). Power BI and Tableau: Tableau leads (65% against 44% for Power BI).
What business intelligence postings ask for
Every role on the board whose title contains business intelligence was counted, worldwide. A tool counts when the listing names it; the table also shows the share for all 5,737 analyst roles, so you can see what is specific to this job.
| Tool | Roles | Share | All analyst roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| SQL | 55 | 96% | 74% |
| Tableau | 37 | 65% | 31% |
| Python | 34 | 60% | 56% |
| Power BI | 25 | 44% | 27% |
| Looker | 21 | 37% | 16% |
| dbt | 10 | 18% | 10% |
| R | 5 | 9% | 14% |
Tools named in business intelligence roles (57 roles that list tools). Shares are of roles whose listing names at least one tool. Excel is left out because the board's Excel tag overcounted until October 2026.
How business intelligence jobs differ from other analyst jobs
Tableau shows up more often: 65% of business intelligence roles against 31% of analyst roles overall.
SQL shows up more often: 96% of business intelligence roles against 74% of analyst roles overall.
Looker shows up more often: 37% of business intelligence roles against 16% of analyst roles overall.
What to learn first
Business intelligence roles center on one BI tool in depth, plus SQL and data modeling.
Know how to build a model that others can use, not only a dashboard: star schemas, measures and refresh schedules.
dbt and a cloud warehouse such as Snowflake or BigQuery are the next step once the BI tool is solid.
Where these jobs are
The countries with the most business intelligence roles are United States (22), India (9), United Kingdom (6) and Canada (3). Employers with the most open: wppmedia (6), Thunes (3), Waymo (3), Abbvie (2) and Bosch (2).
11% are entry level and 9% are remote.
Where the numbers come from
Every number on this page is computed from the live analyst roles on realanalystjobs.com on 11 October 2026, read from the employers' own career pages and re-checked daily, and it updates as roles open and close. H-1B figures come from the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub (data as of 2026-06-30). Nothing is estimated or projected.
Frequently asked
Do business intelligences need Python?
Python is named in 60% of business intelligence listings that name tools, against 56% across all analyst roles. SQL is named in 96%.
Is Power BI or Tableau more common in business intelligence jobs?
Tableau leads (65% against 44% for Power BI), counted across 57 business intelligence roles that name tools.
How many business intelligence jobs are open?
74 live roles at 50 companies on realanalystjobs.com on 11 October 2026, 19 of them first seen in the last 7 days.
See the roles
Browse every live analyst role.
Pulled from company career pages, re-checked daily. Free to browse.
