Ideaswiz
Cool business ideas for startups and business development
Ideaswiz
Publication and Dissertations Reference

How to Build a Future-Proof IT Business Analyst Career in 2025 (and Beyond)

by |Published

💡 Why 2025 is a Defining Year for Business Analysts

In a world driven by digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and ever-shifting business models, the role of the Business Analyst (BA) has never been more critical — or more dynamic. Whether you’re just starting your journey, pivoting from another profession, or aiming for leadership, now is the time to understand what it takes to succeed as a Business Analyst in 2025 and beyond.

“AI won’t replace Business Analysts — but Business Analysts who use AI will replace those who don’t.”

🧭 What Exactly Is a Business Analyst in 2025?

At its core, business analysis is the art and science of enabling change by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver real value to stakeholders. In practice, BAs are:

  • Translators between business goals and technical implementation
  • Investigators of business needs and user pain points
  • Strategists, facilitators, and sometimes change agents

Forget the outdated image of the BA as a glorified note-taker. Today’s BA is a hybrid thinker with one foot in stakeholder management and the other in digital tools and data platforms. How does this IT Business analyst role compare to other Analysts e.g. Financial analyst , Data analyst see: Comparison of IT Business Analysts (BAs) to Other Analyst roles

For updated salaries visit for Permanent and contract roles (UK) visit: www.itjobswatch.co.uk see appendices for other countries

See IT BA repository for:

📈 5 Career Stages of a Business Analyst (2025+)

Based on the updated BA Competency Framework (2025), here’s a modern snapshot of the career ladder:

🟢 Level 1: Trainee BA

You’ll master the basics: Agile, interviewing, stakeholder roles, and entry-level tools (e.g., JIRA, Lucidchart, Otter.ai). This is your launchpad.

🟡 Level 2: Junior BA

You’ll start facilitating meetings, creating user stories, and analyzing requirements. You’ll also begin using AI tools for documentation and insights.

🔵 Level 3: Business Analyst

Now you lead workshops, design complex processes, and support Agile delivery. You work alongside developers, testers, and product managers — not beneath them.

🔴 Level 4: Senior BA

You’re now advising directors, managing teams, and defining enterprise requirements strategies. You’re also helping select AI and process automation tools.

🟣 Level 5: Business Architect

You connect business strategy with architecture, design future-state capabilities, and work at the executive level. Think TOGAF, BIZBOK, and business model design.

Career paths are not always Linear: Its important to know you can skip steps in the career ladder due to: Skill, Competence , Expertise , Specialty\ previous experience, Qualifications\ certifications, and IT Application or business sector specialist knowledge , Market Demand. Secondly based on your interests and the nature of job requirements\ organisational needs you could pick up other skills or choose a different career path. Common ones are Project manager, Product Owner, Agile coach, Programme Manager or director, Business transformation role (s), consultant, New (no title): AI Discovery, assessment, and implementer.

The IT BA – Hybrid (sometimes called Technical BA’s) role: There is a secondary demand for the IT BA – Hybrid or Technical BA, in which some employers want a BA with some additional skills i.e. BA-Programmer, BA-System analyst, BA-Data analyst this demand may be due to actual business requirements , but my experience tells me that a percentage of employers and recruiters don’t start from a baseline understanding of what an IT BA does and blur the line with other roles, or are trying to reduce cost or are using old boiler plate Job specification \ role to create a profile. These hybrid roles are needed and people with this skill\experience exist: if you perform a job search (input BA Hybrid or technical BA into Jobserve ). But there are not that many people with both qualities at a high level of expertise (if good usually paid at a 10-40% more). They are usually IT BA’s who have transitioned from software development or have a software engineering qualification\ Application knowledge expertise (e.g. mix of technology or product: SAP, SAAS, Cloud, Dev -Ops, Salesforce, etc) or both. In the overall market numbers are diminishing or working, due to demand . But in the future due to speciality of roles and more IT BA’s from none IT programming\ software development backgrounds will affect supply. The supply \ demand and new technologies \applications\ business transformation \ migration to cloud architectures \ change of tech stack are drivers of this niche. Its worth noting when there are big lay-offs from software development companies or banks there is a flood of new technical BA who have rewritten their CV to transition to the domain of the IT BA . Some have the expertise\ domain knowledge \ experience (and are good, i.e. part of previous job role but not the job title) but some……!!! (I will write about the skill gaps of some of these people operating in BA domain later in another post e.g. 1. Bad stakeholder management and interpersonal skills, 2. Always technical solutioning, 3. Lack of expertise in visual modelling and non technical plus technical process capture. etc and will write how to recruit the right technical \ hybrid BA and create a Job role and specification).

For some support during your career see Substack post : Your Support for a Career in Business Analysis

🎯 Four Real Career Paths for Business Analysts

  1. 🖥 Traditional IT BA
    Great for structured thinkers. Start in SDLC and end up as a Business Architect.
  2. 📦 Product / Agile BA
    Ideal if you love sprints, user stories, and product-market fit. Could lead to Head of Product.
  3. 📊 Data & AI BA
    Perfect for the analytically curious. This path leads to roles like BI Lead or Chief Data Officer.
  4. 🧠 Consulting / Strategy BA
    Great if you’re client-facing and business-savvy. This route ends in Transformation Director or Consultant.

🔮 The Future of the BA Role — and AI’s Role In It

The future is not about being replaced by AI — it’s about working with it. You’ll need to master:

  • Prompt engineering for tools like ChatGPT
  • Automated modelling and elicitation (NLP, AutoML)
  • Data storytelling using Power BI and LLMs
  • Ethical audits of AI-driven decisions

New BA-adjacent roles will emerge:

  • AI-Human Liaison
  • Process Automation Designer
  • Ethics Analyst
  • Metaverse BA (yes, really!)

🛠 Must-Have Skills & Tools in 2025

Skills:

  • Agile facilitation & stakeholder management
  • Data analysis & visual storytelling
  • Critical thinking & negotiation
  • AI literacy and data ethics

Tools:

  • JIRA, Confluence, Lucidchart, Miro
  • SQL, Power BI, Python (basic)
  • ChatGPT, Otter.ai, Notion AI, Celonis

🎓 Certifications That Matter

  • IIBA ECBA, CCBA, CBAP – Based on experience level
  • BCS Diploma in Business Analysis
  • ScrumMaster / SAFe – For Agile projects
  • Google Data Analytics, AI for Business – For Data/AI BAs

✅ How to Get Started — Or Level Up

Introduction \ entry level courses (no experience or knowledge expected) : UK: Foundation Certificate USA: Entry Certificate in Business Analysis

💬 Final Words

The 2025+ BA is not just an analyst — they’re an enabler of innovation in a world of complexity. Whether you want to write user stories or design AI-governed ecosystems, there’s a seat for you at the table.

So… where will you start?

Appendices

Appendices A Salaries for Business analysts international

United States & Canada

  1. Indeed Salary Explorer (www.indeed.com/career/salaries) – Salary trends & job demand.
  2. Glassdoor Salaries (www.glassdoor.com/Salaries) – Company-specific salary reports.
  3. Payscale (www.payscale.com) – Detailed salary data by role & experience.
  4. LinkedIn Salary Insights (via LinkedIn Jobs) – Aggregates salary data from user profiles.
  5. Dice Salary Report (www.dice.com/career-advice/salary-report) – Focuses on US tech jobs.

Europe

Australia & New Zealand

  1. Seek Salary Tool (www.seek.com.au/salary)
  2. Payscale Australia (www.payscale.com/australia)
  3. Hays Salary Guide (www.hays.com.au/salary)

Asia

Global Options

AUTHOR

Steve Adenaike
I am a Business Consultant and Analyst who likes to discuss business ideas and how to implement them. I hope this blog will act as a discussion forum and inspire people to do great thing with their ideas.

You may also like

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *