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 13 October 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 312 528 469
Rank change year-on-year +216 -59 +14
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 683 141 313
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.29% 0.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.32% 0.46%
Number of salaries quoted 383 82 124
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £61,000 £52,500 £49,939
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £67,500 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +18.52% +7.35% +0.61%
75th Percentile £95,000 £85,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £108,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +36.36% - -12.00%

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 109,503 44,040 68,088
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.55% 89.76% 95.37%
Number of salaries quoted 74,366 25,685 38,800
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £35,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £53,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.81% -2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +19.57% -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 13 October 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 13 October 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 +193 635 £80,000 +14.29% 602
UK excluding London +126 366 £75,000 +36.36% 206
London +111 293 £85,000 +13.33% 401
Work from Home +69 162 £70,000 +3.70% 265
North of England +22 109 £80,000 +45.45% 67
South East +31 78 £80,000 +88.24% 41
Midlands +12 73 £70,000 +0.54% 39
South West -12 69 £75,000 +7.14% 25
East Midlands +30 67 £68,750 -14.06% 17
North West +6 58 £75,000 +36.36% 39
Yorkshire +5 40 £84,387 +53.43% 25
Wales - 16 £75,000 - 10
North East -59 11 £80,000 +53.85% 3
Northern Ireland -66 10 £72,500 +81.25% 2
East of England -32 7 £60,000 +2.13% 21
West Midlands -38 6 £75,013 +26.60% 22
Scotland +4 4 £75,013 +66.70% 4

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

For the 6 months to 13 October 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.

1 681 (99.71%) Data Science
2 349 (51.10%) Machine Learning
3 276 (40.41%) AI
4 239 (34.99%) Python
5 202 (29.58%) Analytics
6 119 (17.42%) SQL
7 102 (14.93%) Actionable Insight
8 95 (13.91%) MLOps
9 88 (12.88%) Generative AI
10 83 (12.15%) Degree
10 83 (12.15%) Natural Language Processing
11 79 (11.57%) Statistics
12 77 (11.27%) Predictive Modelling
13 74 (10.83%) Azure
14 73 (10.69%) Mentoring
15 64 (9.37%) Decision-Making
16 63 (9.22%) CI/CD
16 63 (9.22%) Roadmaps
17 61 (8.93%) AWS
18 60 (8.78%) LLM
19 54 (7.91%) Problem-Solving
20 53 (7.76%) Deep Learning
20 53 (7.76%) Software Engineering
21 52 (7.61%) GCP
22 51 (7.47%) Data Analysis
23 50 (7.32%) Data Engineering
23 50 (7.32%) Mathematics
23 50 (7.32%) Validation
24 49 (7.17%) Agile
25 45 (6.59%) Feature Engineering

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 (5.86%) Apache Spark
2 7 (1.02%) Apache
3 6 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.88%) SAS
4 3 (0.44%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.15%) R Markdown
Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.44%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.29%) SPSS
Cloud Services
1 74 (10.83%) Azure
2 61 (8.93%) AWS
3 52 (7.61%) GCP
4 24 (3.51%) SaaS
5 20 (2.93%) Azure Machine Learning
6 10 (1.46%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.02%) dbt
8 4 (0.59%) Azure AI
8 4 (0.59%) Azure Databricks
8 4 (0.59%) Cloud Composer
8 4 (0.59%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.44%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.44%) Anthropic Claude
9 3 (0.44%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (0.44%) GitHub
9 3 (0.44%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 3 (0.44%) Serverless
10 2 (0.29%) Azure Data Factory
10 2 (0.29%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (0.29%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.44%) 5G
1 3 (0.44%) Broadband
2 2 (0.29%) Firewall
2 2 (0.29%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (4.10%) Amazon Redshift
2 12 (1.76%) Big Data
2 12 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (1.46%) Power BI
4 8 (1.17%) Tableau
5 7 (1.02%) Data Lake
5 7 (1.02%) Flink
5 7 (1.02%) Looker
6 5 (0.73%) BigQuery
6 5 (0.73%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.59%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.44%) Apache Iceberg
8 3 (0.44%) Redis
9 2 (0.29%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.29%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.29%) GIS
10 1 (0.15%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.15%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.15%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 35 (5.12%) Git
2 10 (1.46%) MLflow
3 2 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.15%) Claude Code
General
1 142 (20.79%) Finance
2 70 (10.25%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (10.10%) Banking
4 65 (9.52%) Social Skills
5 46 (6.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 37 (5.42%) Retail
7 31 (4.54%) Marketing
8 29 (4.25%) Financial Institution
9 23 (3.37%) Public Sector
10 20 (2.93%) Games
11 18 (2.64%) Legal
12 14 (2.05%) Law
13 11 (1.61%) Advertising
14 8 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.02%) Telecoms
16 6 (0.88%) Wearables
17 5 (0.73%) Publishing
17 5 (0.73%) Retail Banking
18 4 (0.59%) Automotive
18 4 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (5.86%) PyTorch
2 39 (5.71%) TensorFlow
3 25 (3.66%) Hugging Face
3 25 (3.66%) SpaCy
4 19 (2.78%) Pandas
5 18 (2.64%) scikit-learn
6 13 (1.90%) NumPy
7 10 (1.46%) LangChain
8 9 (1.32%) XGBoost
9 8 (1.17%) Terraform
10 7 (1.02%) PySpark
11 6 (0.88%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.88%) SciPy
12 5 (0.73%) Streamlit
13 4 (0.59%) Apache Beam
13 4 (0.59%) LlamaIndex
13 4 (0.59%) Plotly
13 4 (0.59%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.44%) Kafka
15 2 (0.29%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 39 (5.71%) Algorithms
2 25 (3.66%) e-Learning
3 16 (2.34%) AI Agents
4 9 (1.32%) Credit Risk
5 8 (1.17%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.02%) Hedge funds
6 7 (1.02%) Social Media
7 6 (0.88%) Online Gambling
8 5 (0.73%) Life Science
8 5 (0.73%) Pricing Data
9 4 (0.59%) Blog
9 4 (0.59%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.59%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.44%) Clustering
10 3 (0.44%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.44%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.44%) Product Ownership
11 2 (0.29%) FMCG
11 2 (0.29%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.44%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 681 (99.71%) Data Science
2 349 (51.10%) Machine Learning
3 276 (40.41%) AI
4 202 (29.58%) Analytics
5 102 (14.93%) Actionable Insight
6 95 (13.91%) MLOps
7 88 (12.88%) Generative AI
8 83 (12.15%) Natural Language Processing
9 79 (11.57%) Statistics
10 77 (11.27%) Predictive Modelling
11 73 (10.69%) Mentoring
12 64 (9.37%) Decision-Making
13 63 (9.22%) CI/CD
13 63 (9.22%) Roadmaps
14 60 (8.78%) LLM
15 54 (7.91%) Problem-Solving
16 53 (7.76%) Deep Learning
16 53 (7.76%) Software Engineering
17 51 (7.47%) Data Analysis
18 50 (7.32%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 239 (34.99%) Python
2 119 (17.42%) SQL
3 24 (3.51%) R
4 7 (1.02%) Java
5 6 (0.88%) Scala
6 4 (0.59%) C
6 4 (0.59%) Shell Script
7 3 (0.44%) C++
8 2 (0.29%) Bash
8 2 (0.29%) VBA
9 1 (0.15%) C#
9 1 (0.15%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.15%) LookML
9 1 (0.15%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 83 (12.15%) Degree
2 43 (6.30%) Master's Degree
2 43 (6.30%) Security Cleared
3 36 (5.27%) PhD
4 29 (4.25%) DV Cleared
5 8 (1.17%) SC Cleared
6 6 (0.88%) Numerate Degree
7 3 (0.44%) CISSP
8 2 (0.29%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (0.29%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.29%) GIAC
8 2 (0.29%) Postgraduate
8 2 (0.29%) SANS
9 1 (0.15%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.15%) CEH
9 1 (0.15%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.81%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.90%) Actionable Recommendations
3 6 (0.88%) Accessibility
4 5 (0.73%) EU AI Act
4 5 (0.73%) GDPR
5 4 (0.59%) QA
6 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 18 (2.64%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (2.05%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.29%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.29%) Computer Incident Response Team
3 1 (0.15%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 40 (5.86%) Databricks
2 19 (2.78%) Microsoft
3 17 (2.49%) Workday
4 15 (2.20%) Google
4 15 (2.20%) LexisNexis
5 6 (0.88%) OpenAI
6 4 (0.59%) New Relic
6 4 (0.59%) Splunk
7 3 (0.44%) Oracle
7 3 (0.44%) PeopleSoft
7 3 (0.44%) Revolut
7 3 (0.44%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.29%) SYSPRO
9 1 (0.15%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.15%) Intel
9 1 (0.15%) Mistral
9 1 (0.15%) SAP