BI Developer
You build the dashboards people actually run the business from.
No degree needed Approachable to enter. The hard part is deciding what to put on the screen.
Can I actually do this?
One of the more open data roles without a degree, and a common first data job. The path is concrete: learn SQL properly, learn one BI tool well, and build dashboards from real public data. The tools are free to learn even where the server products are paid.
Who it suits. People who want their work looked at every morning by someone making a decision.
Runway. Months. SQL plus one BI tool gets you interviewing.
Coming from an operations or admin job where you already build spreadsheets? That is a genuine starting point, and knowing the business is an advantage a technical hire does not have. Data Analyst Help Desk / IT Support
Also advertised as
The route
Four stations, in order. Each one is a thing you finish before the next matters.
-
Station one
Learn it free
Only the best few, deliberately. Every one of these is free to use — the pill on each card says exactly what is and isn't free.
Get started with Power BI Desktop
Free to learn · no certificate
Power BI Desktop is free to download and use; publishing and sharing is where Microsoft charges. The learning costs nothing.
Verified 2026-07-28
PostgreSQL — the official tutorial
Free to learn · no certificate
Every BI tool is a window onto SQL. People who skip this hit a ceiling within a year.
Verified 2026-07-27
dbt — what is dbt?
Free to learn · no certificate
Where the tables behind your dashboards come from. Understanding the layer below makes you much harder to replace.
Verified 2026-07-28
-
Station two
Attest strategically
Vendor BI certificates exist and are relatively cheap, and they demonstrate familiarity with one product rather than judgement about what to measure. A portfolio of dashboards built from public data shows more and costs nothing. If an employer already runs a specific tool and will fund its exam, take it then.
Nothing here is worth paying for
No credential needed
Vendor BI certificates exist and are relatively cheap, and they demonstrate familiarity with one product rather than judgement about what to measure. A portfolio of dashboards built from public data shows more and costs nothing. If an employer already runs a specific tool and will fund its exam, take it then.
Checked 2026-07-28
-
Station three
Prove it
A certificate says you passed a test. These say you can do the job.
A dashboard built from real public data
Pick a genuine open dataset and answer a question with it. Publish it so someone can click.
A chart you deliberately made boring
Show a case where you removed decoration to make the number readable. Restraint is the skill.
A metric definition written down
Define what you are counting precisely enough that two people would get the same number.
-
Station four
Get hired
Search these exact titles
Who hires for this. Almost any organisation past a certain size — retail, finance, health, logistics, the public sector.
A published dashboard can be opened and judged in seconds, which is why portfolio work travels well here. That is our reasoning about what is inspectable, not a hiring statistic we have verified.
On salaryWe don't publish salary estimates. Numbers copied between blogs drift from reality, and a wrong number costs you real negotiating power. When we have a verified public source, it goes here with its date.
Where this route continues
- Analytics Engineer — the modelling layer underneath
- Data Analyst — toward the analysis side
- Data Analyst — sideways move
- Analytics Engineer — sideways move
This page last verified 2026-07-28 · How we verify
Power BI getting started (7,574 chars) and dbt introduction fetched and READ 2026-07-28. PostgreSQL tutorial carried from 2026-07-27.