Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 21 March 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 399 438
Rank change year-on-year -57 +39 +84
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 249 257 477
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.61% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.67% 0.59%
Number of salaries quoted 179 109 241
10th Percentile £46,250 £39,550 £45,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £48,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -14.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £82,500 £76,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,250 £101,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% -10.77% +9.99%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 69,843 38,164 81,143
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.98% 90.31% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 44,555 23,016 61,790
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £43,408 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,263
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -4.76%

Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Data Scientist' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Scientist over the 6 months to 21 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 21 March 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -20 236 £68,360 +13.93% 138
London +39 122 £75,000 - 90
UK excluding London -90 121 £60,000 +3.45% 70
Work from Home -24 74 £60,000 -3.23% 43
North of England -57 31 £62,500 +13.64% 15
South West -59 30 £60,000 -16.66% 7
Midlands -21 28 £55,000 +22.22% 10
North West -16 23 £61,418 +11.67% 11
South East -21 16 £40,000 -32.20% 33
West Midlands -17 14 £55,000 +22.22% 3
East Midlands -33 14 £62,500 +7.76% 7
East of England -5 8 £86,725 +49.53% 4
Scotland -30 5 £100,000 +42.86% 1
Yorkshire -48 5 £62,500 -2.34% 2
North East -23 3 £62,500 - 3
Northern Ireland -30 3 - - 1

Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 March 2026, Data Scientist job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Data Scientist in the job title.

1 237 (95.18%) Data Science
2 114 (45.78%) Machine Learning
3 111 (44.58%) Python
4 105 (42.17%) AI
5 85 (34.14%) Analytics
6 62 (24.90%) SQL
7 55 (22.09%) Visualisation
8 53 (21.29%) Degree
9 51 (20.48%) Decision-Making
10 39 (15.66%) Power BI
10 39 (15.66%) Power Platform
11 38 (15.26%) Security Cleared
12 37 (14.86%) Business Intelligence
13 35 (14.06%) Predictive Modelling
14 34 (13.65%) Mathematics
15 32 (12.85%) DV Cleared
16 31 (12.45%) Problem-Solving
17 29 (11.65%) Azure
17 29 (11.65%) Data Visualisation
17 29 (11.65%) R
18 27 (10.84%) Actionable Insight
19 26 (10.44%) Statistics
20 25 (10.04%) LLM
21 24 (9.64%) PhD
22 23 (9.24%) AWS
22 23 (9.24%) Data Analysis
22 23 (9.24%) Storytelling
23 22 (8.84%) Tableau
24 21 (8.43%) Data Modelling
24 21 (8.43%) Generative AI

Data Scientist Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 4 (1.61%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.80%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (4.02%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 39 (15.66%) Power Platform
2 29 (11.65%) Azure
3 23 (9.24%) AWS
4 10 (4.02%) dbt
5 8 (3.21%) Snowflake
6 7 (2.81%) GCP
7 5 (2.01%) Azure Machine Learning
8 4 (1.61%) Dataform
8 4 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (1.61%) Smartsheet
9 2 (0.80%) Amazon S3
9 2 (0.80%) Amazon SageMaker
9 2 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (0.80%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (0.80%) Dagster
9 2 (0.80%) Serverless
10 1 (0.40%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.40%) Google Analytics
10 1 (0.40%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.40%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.01%) Broadband
2 1 (0.40%) Internet
2 1 (0.40%) LTE
2 1 (0.40%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.40%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (15.66%) Power BI
2 22 (8.84%) Tableau
3 8 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (3.21%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.01%) Big Data
5 4 (1.61%) Looker
5 4 (1.61%) Metabase
6 3 (1.20%) Data Mining
6 3 (1.20%) QGIS
7 2 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.80%) GIS
7 2 (0.80%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.80%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.80%) Spatial Data
8 1 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.40%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (3.21%) Git
1 8 (3.21%) MLflow
General
1 44 (17.67%) Social Skills
2 43 (17.27%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (12.45%) Finance
4 29 (11.65%) Retail
5 19 (7.63%) Marketing
6 18 (7.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (5.62%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.02%) Publishing
9 7 (2.81%) Law
10 6 (2.41%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.20%) Games
12 3 (1.20%) Legal
13 2 (0.80%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.80%) Banking
13 2 (0.80%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.80%) Social Housing
14 1 (0.40%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.03%) PyTorch
2 17 (6.83%) TensorFlow
3 12 (4.82%) scikit-learn
4 9 (3.61%) EDI
5 6 (2.41%) XGBoost
6 4 (1.61%) Google JAX
6 4 (1.61%) JAX
6 4 (1.61%) Pandas
7 3 (1.20%) LangChain
7 3 (1.20%) NumPy
7 3 (1.20%) PySpark
8 2 (0.80%) Kafka
8 2 (0.80%) NetworkX
8 2 (0.80%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.40%) FastAPI
9 1 (0.40%) GeoPandas
9 1 (0.40%) Hugging Face
9 1 (0.40%) MapLibre
9 1 (0.40%) Shiny
9 1 (0.40%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 12 (4.82%) Algorithms
2 11 (4.42%) Data Structures
3 10 (4.02%) FMCG
3 10 (4.02%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (2.01%) Product Ownership
5 2 (0.80%) AI Agents
5 2 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (0.80%) Contract for Difference
5 2 (0.80%) Fixed Income
6 1 (0.40%) Cloud Native
6 1 (0.40%) Clustering
6 1 (0.40%) Credit Risk
6 1 (0.40%) Educational Technology
6 1 (0.40%) e-Learning
6 1 (0.40%) FPGA
6 1 (0.40%) Genomics
6 1 (0.40%) Omics
6 1 (0.40%) Reinsurance
6 1 (0.40%) Social Network
6 1 (0.40%) Tandem
Processes & Methodologies
1 237 (95.18%) Data Science
2 114 (45.78%) Machine Learning
3 105 (42.17%) AI
4 85 (34.14%) Analytics
5 55 (22.09%) Visualisation
6 51 (20.48%) Decision-Making
7 37 (14.86%) Business Intelligence
8 35 (14.06%) Predictive Modelling
9 34 (13.65%) Mathematics
10 31 (12.45%) Problem-Solving
11 29 (11.65%) Data Visualisation
12 27 (10.84%) Actionable Insight
13 26 (10.44%) Statistics
14 25 (10.04%) LLM
15 23 (9.24%) Data Analysis
15 23 (9.24%) Storytelling
16 21 (8.43%) Data Modelling
16 21 (8.43%) Generative AI
17 19 (7.63%) Business Strategy
17 19 (7.63%) E-Commerce
Programming Languages
1 111 (44.58%) Python
2 62 (24.90%) SQL
3 29 (11.65%) R
4 4 (1.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 4 (1.61%) Julia
4 4 (1.61%) T-SQL
5 1 (0.40%) C++
5 1 (0.40%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (21.29%) Degree
2 38 (15.26%) Security Cleared
3 32 (12.85%) DV Cleared
4 24 (9.64%) PhD
5 13 (5.22%) DBS Check
6 10 (4.02%) ACCA
6 10 (4.02%) CIMA
6 10 (4.02%) SC Cleared
7 7 (2.81%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.20%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.40%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 3 (1.20%) GDPR
3 1 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.40%) ISO 13485
3 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.40%) QA
System Software
1 5 (2.01%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.61%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.80%) Terraform
3 1 (0.40%) Argo
3 1 (0.40%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 12 (4.82%) Microsoft
2 11 (4.42%) Databricks
2 11 (4.42%) Salesforce
3 6 (2.41%) ServiceNow
4 3 (1.20%) Google
5 2 (0.80%) Civica
5 2 (0.80%) Northgate
5 2 (0.80%) Orchard
6 1 (0.40%) Facebook
6 1 (0.40%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.40%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.40%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud