Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 July 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 360 474 550
Rank change year-on-year +114 +76 -4
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 496 203 342
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.41% 0.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.46% 0.38%
Number of salaries quoted 322 101 205
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,320
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +11.32% +0.61%
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £61,250
% change year-on-year +16.67% -2.04% +2.08%

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 94,139 44,347 91,129
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.26% 89.90% 94.76%
Number of salaries quoted 64,646 26,264 64,457
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year - +2.80% -10.83%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £70,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.66%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 +139 467 £75,000 +15.38% 164
UK excluding London +61 277 £70,000 +16.67% 76
London +82 200 £80,000 +1.59% 116
Work from Home +34 156 £66,720 +3.44% 78
North of England +46 93 £75,000 +36.36% 19
Midlands +39 83 £60,000 +1.27% 5
East Midlands +45 70 £62,500 +4.24%
North West +44 67 £75,000 +42.86% 12
South West -57 52 £60,000 -29.41% 10
South East -9 22 £60,000 +14.29% 25
Yorkshire -16 14 £79,000 +23.44% 5
East of England -6 13 £75,863 +45.89% 3
West Midlands -16 13 £55,000 -7.17% 5
North East -34 12 £80,000 +53.85% 2
Wales -46 9 £65,000 -23.53% 7
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
Scotland +8 2 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 20 July 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.

1 490 (98.79%) Data Science
2 252 (50.81%) Machine Learning
3 206 (41.53%) Python
4 186 (37.50%) AI
5 150 (30.24%) Analytics
6 119 (23.99%) SQL
7 76 (15.32%) MLOps
8 73 (14.72%) Actionable Insight
9 72 (14.52%) Degree
10 71 (14.31%) Mentoring
11 68 (13.71%) Statistics
12 62 (12.50%) Decision-Making
13 58 (11.69%) Azure
13 58 (11.69%) Roadmaps
14 57 (11.49%) AWS
15 52 (10.48%) Generative AI
16 50 (10.08%) PyTorch
16 50 (10.08%) Visualisation
17 49 (9.88%) Deep Learning
17 49 (9.88%) LLM
17 49 (9.88%) Mathematics
18 44 (8.87%) Natural Language Processing
19 42 (8.47%) GCP
19 42 (8.47%) TensorFlow
20 41 (8.27%) CI/CD
21 39 (7.86%) Predictive Modelling
21 39 (7.86%) Software Engineering
22 37 (7.46%) Feature Engineering
23 35 (7.06%) Agile
23 35 (7.06%) Security Cleared

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 19 (3.83%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.21%) SAS
3 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.40%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (0.60%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 58 (11.69%) Azure
2 57 (11.49%) AWS
3 42 (8.47%) GCP
4 29 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 14 (2.82%) SaaS
6 11 (2.22%) Azure Machine Learning
7 9 (1.81%) dbt
8 6 (1.21%) Amazon SageMaker
8 6 (1.21%) Dataform
8 6 (1.21%) Dynamics 365
9 4 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (0.81%) Serverless
9 4 (0.81%) Smartsheet
10 3 (0.60%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
10 3 (0.60%) Snowflake
11 2 (0.40%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.01%) Broadband
2 4 (0.81%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.60%) 5G
4 2 (0.40%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.85%) Power BI
2 18 (3.63%) Tableau
3 15 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
4 11 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (2.02%) Looker
6 7 (1.41%) Big Data
7 6 (1.21%) Metabase
8 3 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.60%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.60%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.40%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.40%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 21 (4.23%) Git
2 10 (2.02%) MLflow
3 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 110 (22.18%) Finance
2 71 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
3 55 (11.09%) Social Skills
4 42 (8.47%) Banking
5 38 (7.66%) Retail
6 28 (5.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (5.24%) Public Sector
8 25 (5.04%) Marketing
9 17 (3.43%) Financial Institution
10 13 (2.62%) Games
11 11 (2.22%) Legal
11 11 (2.22%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.61%) Advertising
12 8 (1.61%) Pharmaceutical
13 7 (1.41%) Law
14 6 (1.21%) Automotive
14 6 (1.21%) Wearables
15 5 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (1.01%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (10.08%) PyTorch
2 42 (8.47%) TensorFlow
3 27 (5.44%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.84%) Hugging Face
5 22 (4.44%) Pandas
6 14 (2.82%) SpaCy
7 12 (2.42%) NumPy
8 11 (2.22%) XGBoost
9 8 (1.61%) PySpark
10 7 (1.41%) LangChain
11 5 (1.01%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (0.81%) SciPy
12 4 (0.81%) Seaborn
13 3 (0.60%) Streamlit
14 2 (0.40%) Google JAX
14 2 (0.40%) JAX
14 2 (0.40%) LightGBM
14 2 (0.40%) Matplotlib
14 2 (0.40%) Plotly
15 1 (0.20%) Keras
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.65%) Algorithms
2 14 (2.82%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.61%) Credit Risk
4 7 (1.41%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.41%) Data Structures
4 7 (1.41%) Hedge funds
5 6 (1.21%) Cloud Native
6 5 (1.01%) Life Science
7 4 (0.81%) Pricing Data
7 4 (0.81%) Social Media
8 3 (0.60%) Clustering
8 3 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (0.60%) FMCG
8 3 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.40%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (0.40%) Insider Threat
9 2 (0.40%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.40%) Product Ownership
9 2 (0.40%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.20%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.60%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 490 (98.79%) Data Science
2 252 (50.81%) Machine Learning
3 186 (37.50%) AI
4 150 (30.24%) Analytics
5 76 (15.32%) MLOps
6 73 (14.72%) Actionable Insight
7 71 (14.31%) Mentoring
8 68 (13.71%) Statistics
9 62 (12.50%) Decision-Making
10 58 (11.69%) Roadmaps
11 52 (10.48%) Generative AI
12 50 (10.08%) Visualisation
13 49 (9.88%) Deep Learning
13 49 (9.88%) LLM
13 49 (9.88%) Mathematics
14 44 (8.87%) Natural Language Processing
15 41 (8.27%) CI/CD
16 39 (7.86%) Predictive Modelling
16 39 (7.86%) Software Engineering
17 37 (7.46%) Feature Engineering
Programming Languages
1 206 (41.53%) Python
2 119 (23.99%) SQL
3 33 (6.65%) R
4 6 (1.21%) Julia
5 4 (0.81%) C
5 4 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.81%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.60%) C++
7 2 (0.40%) Bash
7 2 (0.40%) Java
7 2 (0.40%) VBA
8 1 (0.20%) C#
8 1 (0.20%) LookML
Qualifications
1 72 (14.52%) Degree
2 35 (7.06%) Security Cleared
3 24 (4.84%) DV Cleared
3 24 (4.84%) Master's Degree
4 23 (4.64%) PhD
5 16 (3.23%) DBS Check
6 5 (1.01%) SC Cleared
7 3 (0.60%) ACCA
7 3 (0.60%) CIMA
7 3 (0.60%) CISSP
7 3 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.60%) Numerate Degree
8 2 (0.40%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (0.40%) GIAC
8 2 (0.40%) SANS
9 1 (0.20%) CEH
9 1 (0.20%) CISM
9 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.44%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.01%) GDPR
3 4 (0.81%) EU AI Act
3 4 (0.81%) QA
System Software
1 18 (3.63%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (3.02%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.01%) Terraform
3 3 (0.60%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.40%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.40%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 25 (5.04%) Databricks
2 11 (2.22%) Google
2 11 (2.22%) Microsoft
3 6 (1.21%) ServiceNow
4 3 (0.60%) Revolut
4 3 (0.60%) Salesforce
5 2 (0.40%) SYSPRO
6 1 (0.20%) Civica
6 1 (0.20%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.20%) Dataiku
6 1 (0.20%) Northgate
6 1 (0.20%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.20%) Orchard