Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 330 518 463
Rank change year-on-year +188 -55 +31
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 634 144 325
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.29% 0.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.58% 0.33% 0.45%
Number of salaries quoted 387 83 131
10th Percentile £51,700 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £62,500 £52,500 £49,758
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,000 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +11.32% +0.61%
75th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £111,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +36.36% -4.35% -6.12%

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 109,377 44,042 71,502
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 89.72% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,715 25,470 41,572
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,750
25th Percentile £41,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 29 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 17 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 29 September 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 +183 586 £80,000 +14.29% 681
UK excluding London +117 340 £75,000 +36.36% 251
London +94 267 £90,000 +12.50% 444
Work from Home +79 163 £70,000 - 307
North of England +20 112 £80,000 +45.45% 65
South East +14 69 £80,000 +88.24% 47
Midlands +8 69 £67,500 -3.05% 50
East Midlands +16 64 £60,000 -25.00% 26
North West +20 63 £75,000 +36.36% 38
South West -32 56 £72,500 +3.57% 35
Yorkshire +3 37 £84,387 +53.43% 22
Wales - 15 £75,000 - 16
North East -57 12 £80,000 +53.85% 5
Northern Ireland -78 8 £72,500 +81.25% 9
East of England -27 7 £60,000 +2.13% 25
West Midlands -43 5 £75,000 +26.58% 24
Scotland +12 4 £75,013 +66.70% 9

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

For the 6 months to 29 September 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.

1 632 (99.68%) Data Science
2 335 (52.84%) Machine Learning
3 261 (41.17%) AI
4 230 (36.28%) Python
5 187 (29.50%) Analytics
6 116 (18.30%) SQL
7 96 (15.14%) MLOps
8 85 (13.41%) Generative AI
9 84 (13.25%) Actionable Insight
10 79 (12.46%) Degree
10 79 (12.46%) Natural Language Processing
11 76 (11.99%) Azure
11 76 (11.99%) Mentoring
12 75 (11.83%) Statistics
13 65 (10.25%) AWS
14 64 (10.09%) Predictive Modelling
15 62 (9.78%) LLM
16 61 (9.62%) CI/CD
16 61 (9.62%) Roadmaps
17 60 (9.46%) Decision-Making
18 55 (8.68%) GCP
19 53 (8.36%) Deep Learning
20 48 (7.57%) Mathematics
20 48 (7.57%) Problem-Solving
21 47 (7.41%) Agile
21 47 (7.41%) Software Engineering
21 47 (7.41%) Validation
22 46 (7.26%) Feature Engineering
23 45 (7.10%) Security Cleared
24 44 (6.94%) PyTorch

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 40 (6.31%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.95%) Apache
2 6 (0.95%) SAS
3 5 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.47%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.16%) R Markdown
Applications
1 4 (0.63%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) SPSS
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 76 (11.99%) Azure
2 65 (10.25%) AWS
3 55 (8.68%) GCP
4 21 (3.31%) SaaS
5 19 (3.00%) Azure Machine Learning
6 12 (1.89%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.10%) dbt
8 4 (0.63%) Amazon S3
8 4 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.63%) Azure AI
8 4 (0.63%) Azure Databricks
8 4 (0.63%) Serverless
8 4 (0.63%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.47%) Amazon SageMaker
9 3 (0.47%) Anthropic Claude
9 3 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.47%) Cloud Composer
9 3 (0.47%) GitHub
9 3 (0.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 2 (0.32%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.47%) 5G
1 3 (0.47%) Broadband
2 2 (0.32%) Firewall
2 2 (0.32%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (4.26%) Amazon Redshift
2 12 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.89%) Power BI
3 8 (1.26%) Tableau
4 7 (1.10%) Data Lake
4 7 (1.10%) Looker
5 6 (0.95%) Big Data
5 6 (0.95%) Flink
6 5 (0.79%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.63%) BigQuery
7 4 (0.63%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.47%) Apache Iceberg
8 3 (0.47%) Redis
9 2 (0.32%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.32%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.16%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.16%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (5.21%) Git
2 10 (1.58%) MLflow
3 2 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) JIRA
General
1 136 (21.45%) Finance
2 64 (10.09%) Banking
3 60 (9.46%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (8.99%) Social Skills
5 37 (5.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 37 (5.84%) Retail
6 29 (4.57%) Marketing
7 27 (4.26%) Financial Institution
8 24 (3.79%) Public Sector
9 22 (3.47%) Games
10 15 (2.37%) Legal
11 13 (2.05%) Law
12 11 (1.74%) Advertising
13 7 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.95%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.95%) Wearables
15 5 (0.79%) Automotive
15 5 (0.79%) Publishing
15 5 (0.79%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.94%) PyTorch
2 40 (6.31%) TensorFlow
3 25 (3.94%) Hugging Face
4 24 (3.79%) Pandas
4 24 (3.79%) SpaCy
5 23 (3.63%) scikit-learn
6 15 (2.37%) NumPy
7 11 (1.74%) LangChain
8 10 (1.58%) PySpark
9 9 (1.42%) XGBoost
10 7 (1.10%) Terraform
11 6 (0.95%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.95%) SciPy
12 5 (0.79%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.79%) Streamlit
13 4 (0.63%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.47%) Apache Beam
14 3 (0.47%) Kafka
14 3 (0.47%) Plotly
15 2 (0.32%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 37 (5.84%) Algorithms
2 24 (3.79%) e-Learning
3 15 (2.37%) AI Agents
4 9 (1.42%) Cloud Native
4 9 (1.42%) Credit Risk
5 7 (1.10%) Hedge funds
5 7 (1.10%) Social Media
6 6 (0.95%) Life Science
7 5 (0.79%) Pricing Data
8 4 (0.63%) Data Structures
8 4 (0.63%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.47%) Clustering
9 3 (0.47%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (0.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (0.47%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.32%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.32%) FMCG
10 2 (0.32%) Hackathon
10 2 (0.32%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.47%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (99.68%) Data Science
2 335 (52.84%) Machine Learning
3 261 (41.17%) AI
4 187 (29.50%) Analytics
5 96 (15.14%) MLOps
6 85 (13.41%) Generative AI
7 84 (13.25%) Actionable Insight
8 79 (12.46%) Natural Language Processing
9 76 (11.99%) Mentoring
10 75 (11.83%) Statistics
11 64 (10.09%) Predictive Modelling
12 62 (9.78%) LLM
13 61 (9.62%) CI/CD
13 61 (9.62%) Roadmaps
14 60 (9.46%) Decision-Making
15 53 (8.36%) Deep Learning
16 48 (7.57%) Mathematics
16 48 (7.57%) Problem-Solving
17 47 (7.41%) Software Engineering
17 47 (7.41%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 230 (36.28%) Python
2 116 (18.30%) SQL
3 18 (2.84%) R
4 6 (0.95%) Java
5 5 (0.79%) Scala
6 4 (0.63%) C
7 3 (0.47%) C++
7 3 (0.47%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.32%) Bash
8 2 (0.32%) VBA
9 1 (0.16%) C#
9 1 (0.16%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 79 (12.46%) Degree
2 45 (7.10%) Security Cleared
3 40 (6.31%) Master's Degree
4 30 (4.73%) PhD
5 29 (4.57%) DV Cleared
6 8 (1.26%) SC Cleared
7 4 (0.63%) Numerate Degree
8 3 (0.47%) CISSP
8 3 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.32%) GIAC
9 2 (0.32%) SANS
10 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.16%) CEH
10 1 (0.16%) CISM
10 1 (0.16%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (4.10%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (0.79%) EU AI Act
2 5 (0.79%) GDPR
3 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
3 2 (0.32%) QA
System Software
1 20 (3.15%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Incident Response Team
3 1 (0.16%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 40 (6.31%) Databricks
2 18 (2.84%) Google
3 16 (2.52%) Microsoft
4 13 (2.05%) LexisNexis
4 13 (2.05%) Workday
5 6 (0.95%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.47%) New Relic
6 3 (0.47%) Oracle
6 3 (0.47%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.47%) Revolut
6 3 (0.47%) Salesforce
6 3 (0.47%) Splunk
7 2 (0.32%) SYSPRO
8 1 (0.16%) Cognizant
8 1 (0.16%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.16%) Mistral
8 1 (0.16%) SAP