How To Become A Commercial Analyst: What It Is and Career Path

What is a commercial analyst and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

John Clark Ph.D., CFA, CFP

Your role as a commercial analyst will be to conduct close examinations of a company's revenue, operations, expenses, and competition to find ways to improve the company's financial standing. You will do this with the aid of mathematical models and predictive economic research. Furthermore, you will then present these findings to organizational management and respond to any questions or critiques.

Some of the key tasks that you will be performing in this capacity include inputting, formatting, integrating, analyzing, and interpreting data to guide strategic decisions, creating statistical models for crucial business concepts like pricing, risk, and market. You'll also spend time defining and researching technology, competitors, market segments, and other key content areas. Moreover, you will also create reports, visualizations, and dashboards to inform sales and management.

At the minimum, most employers will require applicants to possess a bachelor's degree in accounting or a related field, as well as five to ten years of experience in financial analysis. The position comes along with considerable monetary gains. The average hourly salary for the position is $41.58, which amounts to $86,490 annually.

What general advice would you give to a commercial analyst?

John Clark Ph.D., CFA, CFP

Chair, Dept. of Finance, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

Show you have experience. Doing an internship is a great way to increase your starting salary. I always advocate for doing applied research, this is research that you can show has implications for society - science for the sake of science is not good science! Obtaining an MS degree is also a good way to increase your salary, especially if your MS degree is relevant to your future job.

ScoreCommercial AnalystUS Average

Salary

6.5

Avg. Salary $83,036

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.0

Growth rate 9%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.6

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.27%

Asian 10.75%

Black or African American 8.05%

Hispanic or Latino 9.72%

Unknown 2.67%

White 68.54%

Gender

female 46.76%

male 53.24%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

6.0

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.0

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.4

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a commercial analyst

Explore commercial analyst education requirements

Most common commercial analyst degrees

Bachelor's

72.4 %

Master's

13.3 %

Associate

7.9 %

Start to develop specific commercial analyst skills

Skills	Percentages
Portfolio	12.26%
Data Analysis	7.78%
Financial Statements	7.14%
Business Development	5.66%
SQL	5.60%

Complete relevant commercial analyst training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New commercial analysts learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a commercial analyst based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real commercial analyst resumes.

Research commercial analyst duties and responsibilities

Manage datasets in SAS, which are used by various groups.
Develop, maintain financial models/applications (VBA Excel/Access) to automate and streamline business processes and perform financial analysis.
Perform SQL tuning to improve the performance of the queries.
Participate in initial reports build and optimization of existing reports and ETL during post-implementation cycle of EMR build.

Prepare your commercial analyst resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your commercial analyst resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a commercial analyst resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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