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 6 October 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 324 523 467
Rank change year-on-year +199 -56 +14
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 662 143 323
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.29% 0.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.60% 0.32% 0.46%
Number of salaries quoted 386 83 131
10th Percentile £51,625 £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 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £111,250
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 109,799 44,474 69,871
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.81% 89.76% 95.31%
Number of salaries quoted 74,691 25,606 40,305
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £35,718 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,589 £54,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,566 £50,000
% change year-on-year +18.11% -6.87% -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 6 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 6 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 +203 613 £80,000 +14.29% 796
UK excluding London +119 354 £75,000 +36.36% 314
London +99 282 £90,000 +16.13% 508
Work from Home +82 161 £70,000 - 359
North of England +24 110 £80,000 +45.45% 88
South East +28 75 £80,000 +88.24% 61
Midlands +6 69 £70,000 +0.54% 59
South West -19 64 £72,500 +3.57% 38
East Midlands +27 63 £67,500 -15.63% 24
North West +14 62 £75,000 +36.36% 51
Yorkshire +3 37 £85,000 +54.55% 30
Wales - 16 £75,000 - 20
North East -55 11 £80,000 +53.85% 7
Northern Ireland -80 9 £72,500 +81.25% 6
East of England -25 7 £60,000 +2.13% 29
West Midlands -31 6 £75,000 +26.58% 35
Scotland -1 4 £75,013 +66.70% 16

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

For the 6 months to 6 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.

1 660 (99.70%) Data Science
2 339 (51.21%) Machine Learning
3 269 (40.63%) AI
4 227 (34.29%) Python
5 189 (28.55%) Analytics
6 112 (16.92%) SQL
7 96 (14.50%) MLOps
8 89 (13.44%) Generative AI
9 86 (12.99%) Actionable Insight
10 81 (12.24%) Natural Language Processing
11 78 (11.78%) Degree
12 74 (11.18%) Azure
13 73 (11.03%) Mentoring
14 72 (10.88%) Statistics
15 64 (9.67%) Predictive Modelling
16 63 (9.52%) CI/CD
17 62 (9.37%) AWS
17 62 (9.37%) Roadmaps
18 61 (9.21%) LLM
19 60 (9.06%) Decision-Making
20 54 (8.16%) Deep Learning
21 53 (8.01%) GCP
22 51 (7.70%) Software Engineering
23 50 (7.55%) Problem-Solving
24 49 (7.40%) Agile
25 47 (7.10%) Validation
26 45 (6.80%) Feature Engineering
26 45 (6.80%) Security Cleared
27 43 (6.50%) Mathematics
28 42 (6.34%) Data 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 41 (6.19%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.91%) Apache
2 6 (0.91%) SAS
3 5 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.45%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.15%) R Markdown
Applications
1 5 (0.76%) Chatbot
2 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.30%) SPSS
4 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.15%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 74 (11.18%) Azure
2 62 (9.37%) AWS
3 53 (8.01%) GCP
4 21 (3.17%) SaaS
5 19 (2.87%) Azure Machine Learning
6 9 (1.36%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.06%) dbt
8 4 (0.60%) Azure AI
8 4 (0.60%) Azure Databricks
8 4 (0.60%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.45%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.45%) Anthropic Claude
9 3 (0.45%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (0.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.45%) Cloud Composer
9 3 (0.45%) GitHub
9 3 (0.45%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 3 (0.45%) Serverless
10 2 (0.30%) Amazon SageMaker
10 2 (0.30%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.45%) 5G
1 3 (0.45%) Broadband
2 2 (0.30%) Firewall
2 2 (0.30%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (4.23%) Amazon Redshift
2 12 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (1.36%) Power BI
4 8 (1.21%) Tableau
5 7 (1.06%) Big Data
5 7 (1.06%) Data Lake
5 7 (1.06%) Looker
6 6 (0.91%) Flink
7 5 (0.76%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.60%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.60%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.45%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (0.45%) Redis
10 2 (0.30%) Data Mining
10 2 (0.30%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.15%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.15%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.15%) Power Query
11 1 (0.15%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (5.14%) Git
2 10 (1.51%) MLflow
3 2 (0.30%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.15%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.15%) JIRA
General
1 137 (20.69%) Finance
2 67 (10.12%) Banking
3 58 (8.76%) Analytical Skills
3 58 (8.76%) Social Skills
4 40 (6.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 35 (5.29%) Retail
6 30 (4.53%) Marketing
7 28 (4.23%) Financial Institution
8 22 (3.32%) Public Sector
9 21 (3.17%) Games
10 15 (2.27%) Legal
11 13 (1.96%) Law
12 11 (1.66%) Advertising
13 7 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.91%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.91%) Wearables
15 5 (0.76%) Automotive
15 5 (0.76%) Publishing
15 5 (0.76%) Retail Banking
16 4 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (6.19%) PyTorch
2 40 (6.04%) TensorFlow
3 25 (3.78%) Hugging Face
3 25 (3.78%) SpaCy
4 20 (3.02%) Pandas
5 19 (2.87%) scikit-learn
6 14 (2.11%) NumPy
7 11 (1.66%) LangChain
8 9 (1.36%) XGBoost
9 7 (1.06%) PySpark
9 7 (1.06%) Terraform
10 6 (0.91%) LangGraph
10 6 (0.91%) SciPy
11 5 (0.76%) LlamaIndex
11 5 (0.76%) Streamlit
12 4 (0.60%) Seaborn
13 3 (0.45%) Apache Beam
13 3 (0.45%) Kafka
13 3 (0.45%) Plotly
14 2 (0.30%) Google JAX
Miscellaneous
1 38 (5.74%) Algorithms
2 25 (3.78%) e-Learning
3 16 (2.42%) AI Agents
4 9 (1.36%) Cloud Native
4 9 (1.36%) Credit Risk
5 7 (1.06%) Hedge funds
5 7 (1.06%) Social Media
6 6 (0.91%) Life Science
7 5 (0.76%) Pricing Data
8 4 (0.60%) Data Structures
8 4 (0.60%) Online Gambling
8 4 (0.60%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.45%) Clustering
9 3 (0.45%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (0.45%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (0.45%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.45%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.30%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.30%) Blog
10 2 (0.30%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.45%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 660 (99.70%) Data Science
2 339 (51.21%) Machine Learning
3 269 (40.63%) AI
4 189 (28.55%) Analytics
5 96 (14.50%) MLOps
6 89 (13.44%) Generative AI
7 86 (12.99%) Actionable Insight
8 81 (12.24%) Natural Language Processing
9 73 (11.03%) Mentoring
10 72 (10.88%) Statistics
11 64 (9.67%) Predictive Modelling
12 63 (9.52%) CI/CD
13 62 (9.37%) Roadmaps
14 61 (9.21%) LLM
15 60 (9.06%) Decision-Making
16 54 (8.16%) Deep Learning
17 51 (7.70%) Software Engineering
18 50 (7.55%) Problem-Solving
19 49 (7.40%) Agile
20 47 (7.10%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 227 (34.29%) Python
2 112 (16.92%) SQL
3 15 (2.27%) R
4 6 (0.91%) Java
5 5 (0.76%) Scala
6 4 (0.60%) C
7 3 (0.45%) C++
7 3 (0.45%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.30%) Bash
8 2 (0.30%) VBA
9 1 (0.15%) C#
9 1 (0.15%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.15%) LookML
Qualifications
1 78 (11.78%) Degree
2 45 (6.80%) Security Cleared
3 42 (6.34%) Master's Degree
4 33 (4.98%) PhD
5 29 (4.38%) DV Cleared
6 8 (1.21%) SC Cleared
7 5 (0.76%) Numerate Degree
8 3 (0.45%) CISSP
9 2 (0.30%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.30%) GIAC
9 2 (0.30%) SANS
10 1 (0.15%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.15%) CEH
10 1 (0.15%) CISM
10 1 (0.15%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.47%) Data Quality
2 6 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
3 5 (0.76%) EU AI Act
3 5 (0.76%) GDPR
4 3 (0.45%) QA
5 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 19 (2.87%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (2.27%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.30%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.30%) Computer Incident Response Team
3 1 (0.15%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 37 (5.59%) Databricks
2 17 (2.57%) Microsoft
3 16 (2.42%) Google
4 15 (2.27%) LexisNexis
4 15 (2.27%) Workday
5 6 (0.91%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.45%) New Relic
6 3 (0.45%) Oracle
6 3 (0.45%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.45%) Revolut
6 3 (0.45%) Salesforce
6 3 (0.45%) Splunk
7 2 (0.30%) SYSPRO
8 1 (0.15%) Cognizant
8 1 (0.15%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.15%) Mistral
8 1 (0.15%) SAP