Audit Analyst

An audit analyst checks whether an organisation's financial records, controls and processes are accurate and working as they should. In an accountancy firm this means testing a client company's accounts so the firm can sign off that the financial statements give a true and fair view; in an internal audit team inside a bank, retailer, charity or government body it means reviewing the organisation's own processes and reporting problems to management. The work is largely evidence-gathering: asking for documents, testing samples of transactions, and writing up what you found.

Starting salary: £24k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: 7 open now
Main way in: Graduate schemes at accountancy and professional services firms…
They usually ask for: A degree in any subject for most graduate schemes

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £24,000–£32,000 to start, with London and large professional services firms at the upper end and regional or smaller employers lower. Pay usually rises noticeably on qualifying, but this varies widely by employer, sector and location.

What you'd actually do

Requesting and chasing documents from a client's or department's finance team - invoices, bank statements, contracts, payroll reports - and logging what has and hasn't arrived
Testing samples of transactions: picking a selection of items from a ledger, tracing each one back to supporting evidence, and recording whether it matched
Filling in audit working papers in the firm's software, which are the written record of what you tested, what you found and why you concluded what you did
Running data checks in Excel or an audit data tool - reconciling totals, spotting duplicate payments, flagging entries posted at odd times or by unusual users

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Sitting with a senior to walk through a process with the client (a 'walkthrough'), where someone explains step by step how, say, a supplier gets paid, so you can identify where controls could fail
Writing up findings in plain language for a manager to review, then reworking them after review comments come back
Studying for professional exams, often with paid study leave, alongside the job

How graduates get in

Graduate schemes at accountancy and professional services firms are the most common route - these usually combine the job with a funded professional qualification (ACA, ACCA or CIMA for financial work, or IIA qualifications for internal audit).
Direct entry into an in-house internal audit team at a bank, insurer, large retailer, NHS body, local authority or central government department. Public sector internal audit is a significant employer and is often overlooked by graduates.
School-leaver or apprenticeship routes (Level 4 or Level 7 accountancy apprenticeships) are well established, so some of your colleagues will not have degrees - and graduates can also enter via a Level 7 apprenticeship with a firm.
Spring weeks, summer internships and placement years at professional services firms, which frequently convert into graduate offers and are a strong route if you plan ahead.

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Moving across from a finance, accounts or operations role in industry after a year or two, which is a realistic but less structured route - you may self-fund early exams to make yourself credible.
Specialist entry into IT audit or technology risk, usually from a computing, data or information systems background, sometimes with the CISA qualification taken later. This is a smaller but growing entry point.

What employers ask for

A degree in any subject for most graduate schemes - accounting and finance helps because you may get exemptions from some professional exam papers, but firms routinely hire history, languages, engineering and science graduates.
Typically a 2:1, though a meaningful number of employers now accept a 2:2 or have dropped degree classification filters entirely. This varies a lot between firms, so check each scheme rather than assuming.
UCAS points or GCSE maths and English requirements still apply at some employers and have been removed at others - again, genuinely mixed.
Commitment to a professional qualification, usually ACA (via ICAEW), ACCA, or CIMA, or for internal audit the IIA's PIIA/CMIIA. These take roughly three years of exams alongside full-time work and passing them is normally a condition of staying on the scheme.

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Comfort with numbers rather than advanced maths - you need to be confident reconciling figures and spotting when something doesn't add up, not to do calculus.
Some employers require eligibility for security clearance (public sector, defence) or will run credit and regulatory checks, particularly in financial services.

Skills that matter

Attention to detail under time pressure

A single transposed figure or an untested sample can invalidate a piece of work and get caught at review, so accuracy matters more than speed early on.

Excel and increasingly data tools

Most testing involves pulling apart large transaction files - lookups, pivot tables and filtering are daily tools, and some teams now use Alteryx, Power BI or SQL for whole-population testing rather than samples.

Professional scepticism

The job is to not take an explanation at face value - you have to keep asking for the document that proves it, politely but persistently.

Clear written explanation

Your findings are read by managers and sometimes by audit committees, so you have to describe what went wrong and why it matters without accounting jargon.

Asking awkward questions diplomatically

You will often be a recent graduate asking a long-serving finance manager why a control wasn't followed, and how you handle that determines whether you get the evidence.

Self-management across competing deadlines

You may be on two or three jobs plus exam revision at once, and nobody will plan your week for you after the first few months.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Analyst or associate for roughly the first one to three years, doing the testing and working papers under close review while sitting professional exams.
Senior associate or audit senior once qualified - you now run sections of a job, review junior work and deal with the client directly. Reaching this point is usually tied to exam completion rather than a fixed date.
Assistant manager and manager - planning audits, managing budgets and staffing, owning the relationship with the client or business area. Timelines from here vary widely by employer and by how much you move around.
From manager onwards the paths fork: stay in practice towards senior manager, director and partner; move in-house to internal audit, financial reporting, financial control or risk; or specialise in forensic accounting, IT audit, regulatory compliance or ESG and sustainability assurance.
A very common move is leaving practice after qualifying for an industry finance role - this is normal and expected, not a failure, and the qualification travels well into FP&A (financial planning and analysis), treasury and commercial finance.

What people get wrong

“Audit is just checking that numbers add up.”

A large part of the job is understanding how a business actually works - how it earns revenue, where cash moves, who approves what - because you cannot judge whether a figure is reasonable without that. Much of the evidence you gather is conversations and process documentation, not arithmetic.

“You need an accounting or finance degree.”

Most graduate intakes are mixed-degree. An accounting degree may earn you exemptions from some professional exam papers, which shortens the qualification, but it is not usually a condition of entry.

“It's a desk job in one office.”

In external audit you may spend stretches of time at client sites or working to their timetable, and busy season - often concentrated around clients' year-ends - means genuinely long weeks followed by quieter periods. Internal audit in a large organisation can involve travel to sites, depots or regional offices.

“Auditors are there to catch fraud.”

A statutory audit is designed to give reasonable assurance that financial statements are free from material misstatement, not to guarantee fraud will be found. Fraud investigation is a separate specialism - forensic accounting - though audit work can be the thing that surfaces a problem.

Where this varies

The biggest split is external versus internal audit. External audit sits in an accountancy or professional services firm, works across many client companies, follows a year-end-driven calendar with intense busy seasons, and is almost always tied to ACA or ACCA. Internal audit sits inside one organisation, looks at operational and IT processes as well as financial ones, usually has steadier hours, and may lead to IIA qualifications or CISA instead. Within external audit, large firms give structured training, formal study leave and exposure to big listed clients but narrower slices of work; smaller and mid-tier firms give broader responsibility earlier and more varied clients, often with less formal structure. Public sector internal audit (NHS, councils, government departments) and regulated financial services audit each have their own rules and terminology. Regionally, London has the highest concentration of roles and pay, but Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast all have substantial audit employment.

See all 7 live Audit Analyst jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.