What does a Data Analyst do?

analyzes data.

guessing it's not front office, never heard of a client facing data guy

In this role the company will most likely be using your technical expertise to extract financial data through the use of modeling. The job is very technical and heavily influenced by mathetmatics and advanced algorithms.

In my experience, which is relatively limited, that could mean a ton of different things. Realistically, you'll be using excel to slice and dice large quantities of information and produce meaningful results for others to interpret and use however they wish. And if they don't like your answers, they'll have you do it again and slice it a different way until they are satisfied.

Certainly isn't FO probably closer to MO than anything.

this will most likely involve a lot of repetitive and simple tasks in Excel such as "vlooking up" one spreadsheet against another to produce a report. in other words, really boring stuff. however, if you really feel like making an impact and have good programming skills, you can probably automate most of those tasks (and therefore automate yourself out of a job - hopefully into a better one)