Business Analyst Summer

"Business Analyst Summer" is a summer internship (usually around 8-10 weeks over the university summer break) working as a junior business analyst. A business analyst sits between the people who have a business problem - operations teams, finance, customers - and the people who build or change systems and processes, working out what is actually needed and documenting it clearly enough that it can be built or implemented. As an intern you do a scaled-down version of this: shadowing analysts, gathering requirements, mapping how a process currently works, tidying and analysing data, and delivering a small project of your own that you present at the end.

Starting salary: £22k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 1 open now
Main way in: Applying directly to a structured summer internship in your…
They usually ask for: A degree in progress

Approximate graduate salary

Paid summer internships in this area typically pay somewhere around the equivalent of £22,000–£35,000 a year pro rata, which is roughly £400–£650 a week - but this varies a great deal. Investment banks and large consultancies in London pay at or above the top of that range and sometimes well beyond it, while smaller firms, charities and public sector schemes often pay closer to the lower end or at the National Minimum/Living Wage. Some roles add a housing or travel allowance. Treat these as rough approximations only and check each advert.

What you'd actually do

Sitting in on meetings ('requirements workshops' or 'discovery sessions') where an analyst asks a department how they currently do something and what they want changed - usually taking notes first, then running a session yourself later in the internship
Drawing process maps: diagrams showing each step of how a task is done today ('as-is') and how it might work after a change ('to-be'), typically in Visio, Lucidchart, Miro or similar
Pulling data out of spreadsheets, reporting tools or a database and doing analysis on it - volumes, error rates, how long steps take - to back up or disprove what people have said in interviews
Writing up findings: user stories (short descriptions of what a user needs and why), requirement documents, or slides summarising options and trade-offs for a manager

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Updating tracking tools like Jira, Confluence or Azure DevOps - logging tickets, chasing people for answers, keeping a backlog tidy
Working on an assigned intern project, often alongside other interns, with a presentation to senior staff in the final week
Attending the internship programme itself: training sessions, networking events, coffee chats, insight talks from different parts of the business, and sometimes a case study competition

How graduates get in

Applying directly to a structured summer internship in your penultimate year of university - this is by far the most common route, and applications typically open in the autumn before the summer you want to work, with many closing on a rolling basis well before the stated deadline
Internships in banks, insurers and large consultancies, which tend to be the most formal and competitive and often sit within a wider 'technology' or 'operations' programme rather than being labelled business analysis
Internships in tech companies, retailers, utilities, the NHS and government departments (including Civil Service summer schemes), which are often less well advertised but genuinely exist
Smaller firms and start-ups advertising summer analyst roles directly on job boards or through university careers services - less structured, often more hands-on work earlier

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University placement teams and spring/insight weeks: a first-year spring week at a large employer frequently converts into a summer internship offer the following year
Finishing your degree and taking a short summer contract or temp role as an entry point - unusual as a route into graduate programmes, but it does happen at smaller employers and can lead to a permanent offer

What employers ask for

A degree in progress - subject usually matters less than people expect. Business, economics, management, maths, computer science and information systems are common, but humanities and science students get hired regularly if they can show analytical thinking
Most large employers ask for a 2:1 or predicted 2:1; some have dropped degree classification filters entirely, and some still ask for UCAS points or specific A-level grades. This varies a lot by employer, so check each advert rather than assuming
Usually you need to be in your penultimate year, because the internship is a pipeline into the graduate scheme. Some schemes accept final-year students or recent graduates; many do not
Online assessments are near-universal at larger employers: numerical and logical reasoning tests, situational judgement questions, and increasingly a recorded video interview with pre-set questions

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No professional qualification is required. Awareness of frameworks like Agile or Scrum (ways of running projects in short cycles) helps you sound credible; a BCS or IIBA certification is not expected at intern level
Right to work in the UK matters - sponsorship for a short summer role is uncommon, though international students on a Student visa can usually do a summer internship within their visa conditions

Skills that matter

Asking follow-up questions

People describe what they want, not what they need, and the analyst's job is to keep asking 'why' and 'what happens if' until the real requirement surfaces.

Excel beyond the basics

Most intern analysis still happens in a spreadsheet - pivot tables, lookups and cleaning messy data are used constantly, and it is the single most immediately useful technical skill.

Writing clearly and briefly

A requirement that is ambiguous gets built wrong, so analysts live or die by whether a developer or an operations manager can read a document once and act on it.

Process thinking

Being able to break a messy real-world activity into discrete steps, decision points and handovers is the core mental move of the job and what process maps are built on.

Being comfortable with partial information

Interns are often dropped into a project halfway through with no context, and the ones who do well work out who to ask rather than waiting to be briefed.

Presenting to people more senior than you

Almost every summer internship ends with a presentation, and interim check-ins with stakeholders are routine, so you need to explain findings without hiding behind detail.

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

A return offer for the graduate scheme is the main prize - many large employers fill a substantial part of the following year's graduate intake from their own interns, though no employer guarantees this and some convert far fewer than others
If you convert, you start as a graduate business analyst or junior analyst, usually on a one- to two-year programme, sometimes with rotations through different teams or into related areas like data analysis, project management or product
After a few years, typical next steps are senior business analyst, product owner (owning what a product team builds and in what order), project or delivery manager, or moving into consulting
From there the paths diverge widely: lead or principal analyst, business architect, product manager, programme manager, or a move into the business area you've been analysing. Timeframes vary enormously - some people reach senior in three years, others take considerably longer depending on sector and employer
If you don't convert, the internship still reads well for graduate applications across consulting, operations, technology and product roles, and plenty of people move into a different graduate scheme with it on their CV

What people get wrong

“It's a finance or accountancy job because of the word 'business'.”

Most business analyst roles sit close to technology and change projects. You're far more likely to be writing requirements for a software change than analysing company accounts - although in banks and insurers you will pick up a lot of product knowledge along the way.

“You need to be able to code.”

Coding is rarely required. Being able to read a bit of SQL to query a database is genuinely useful and will make you stand out, but the core work is talking to people, structuring problems and writing things down precisely.

“Interns get given real decision-making work.”

A lot of a summer internship is shadowing, note-taking, chasing people and tidying documentation. That is normal and not a sign you're doing badly - the people who convert are usually the ones who did the unglamorous tasks reliably and asked good questions, not the ones who redesigned the strategy.

“The title is standardised, so all these internships are the same.”

'Business analyst' means noticeably different things across employers. In some organisations it is essentially requirements-gathering for software teams; in others it is data analysis and reporting; in others it is closer to internal consulting or process improvement. Read the advert's description of the actual work rather than relying on the title.

Where this varies

Sector makes a big difference. In banking, insurance and large consultancies the internship is highly structured, heavily assessed, concentrated in London or a few regional hubs (Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow), and explicitly a recruitment funnel for the graduate scheme. In tech companies and start-ups you are likely to be embedded in a delivery team doing real backlog work from week one, with less formal training. In the NHS, local government and the Civil Service the work tends to focus on process improvement and service design, pay is lower and more standardised, and the route in is through named public sector schemes. Length varies too - most are around eight to ten weeks, but some run six weeks and some larger employers offer longer placements. Hybrid working is common, though many employers expect interns in the office more than permanent staff so you actually meet people.

See all 1 live Business Analyst Summer 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.