Business and finance

Financial and Investment Analyst in the United States

80 postings read · sampled 2026-10-01 · source ats · 48 employers · largest 13% of it

What employers actually ask for

Credentials named in the 80 postings we read, ranked by how many mentioned each one.

Bachelor's DegreeAccredited institution
24%
19 of 80 postingsAccredited institution →
Master's DegreeAccredited institution
11%
9 of 80 postingsAccredited institution →
CPAAICPA / State Boards of Accountancy
10%
8 of 80 postings$1,500 exam · fee checked 2026-08~400 hrs prepAICPA / State Boards of Accountancy →
CFA Level ICFA Institute
8%
6 of 80 postings$1,290 exam · fee checked 2026-08~300 hrs prepCFA Institute →

What it costs

Exam and application fees plus typical self-study hours. Almost nobody needs every credential on this list — start with the top line.

Most-asked-for, on its own

$1,500CPA · ~400 hrs

asked for in 8 of 80 postings — 10%

If you earned all 2 of them

$2,790

fees checked 2026-08

700 hrs

700 hours — over a year at 10 hrs/wk

Not in the total: Bachelor's Degree — cost varies by institution; Master's Degree — cost varies by institution.

Lower signal for this role

Credentials that barely appeared in this sample. That is not a claim they are worthless — plenty are valuable for a different job, a different city, or a promotion later. It is a claim that employers here mostly did not ask.

Associate DegreeAccredited institution
1%
1 of 80 postingsAccredited institution →
TS/SCIU.S. Government (DCSA)
3%
2 of 80 postingsU.S. Government (DCSA) →

What the official taxonomy says

O*NET surveys people already doing this job. That describes who got hired over a long window, not what employers are asking for now — where it disagrees with the counts above, the counts are the more current answer.

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed. Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

O*NET 13-2051.00 · pulled 2026-10-01 · no education survey published for this occupation

What it pays

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. A different survey from the postings above, so the two do not share a sample.

$63,720

10th percentile

$102,740

median

$180,860

90th percentile

Every credential above costs $2,790 — about 7 days' pay at the median.

Who was hiring

Employers with at least one matching posting in this sample.

Anduril Industries · Collabera · O-I (Owens-Illinois) · SpaceX · Stripe · System Canada Technologies · Astranis · Boyd Gaming · Braze · Datadog · Integrated Resources Inc · Lyft · Pioneer Data · Ridgeline · USM · vTech Solution · Zoox · Artech Information System · Ask IT Consulting · Bicycle Health · Bosch · Chime · City of New York · Curaleaf · Fanatics Commerce · Flexport · GitLab · Harbinger Motors · HelloFresh · Insomnia Cookies · Intuitive Surgical · Kin Insurance · Latitude Inc · Mark43 · MAT Holdings · MongoDB · Natera · NielsenIQ · Pearce Services · Range · Renuity · Robinhood · Samsara · Saronic · Success Academy Charter Schools · Thrive Market · W3R Consulting · Zinnia

Roast and Resolve — Now aim your résumé at this target. Free roast, paid rewrite.
Synap — Two-minute daily lessons to drill the skills underneath the credential.