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 27 July 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 481 541
Rank change year-on-year +122 +60 +15
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 526 203 311
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.52% 0.41% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.55% 0.46% 0.37%
Number of salaries quoted 336 99 181
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,125 £51,250
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 £88,750 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +16.67% - -4.00%

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 95,592 44,533 83,697
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.36% 90.08% 94.76%
Number of salaries quoted 65,383 26,478 58,009
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £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 27 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 27 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 +144 494 £75,000 +13.96% 169
UK excluding London +89 289 £70,000 +16.67% 87
London +100 216 £80,000 +1.59% 110
Work from Home +24 162 £66,720 +3.44% 86
North of England +46 97 £75,000 +36.36% 23
Midlands +38 83 £60,000 +0.63% 12
East Midlands +39 70 £62,500 +4.24% 2
North West +45 67 £75,000 +39.53% 12
South West -53 56 £60,000 -29.41% 13
South East -6 25 £60,000 +12.68% 23
Yorkshire -20 18 £75,000 +17.19% 11
East of England -4 13 £75,863 +59.71% 4
West Midlands -22 13 £55,000 -7.76% 10
North East -39 12 £80,000 +53.85%
Wales -46 10 £82,500 -2.94% 5
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 2
Scotland +7 2 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 27 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.

1 523 (99.43%) Data Science
2 272 (51.71%) Machine Learning
3 219 (41.63%) Python
4 207 (39.35%) AI
5 165 (31.37%) Analytics
6 123 (23.38%) SQL
7 80 (15.21%) Actionable Insight
8 79 (15.02%) Degree
9 77 (14.64%) MLOps
10 74 (14.07%) Mentoring
11 71 (13.50%) Statistics
12 65 (12.36%) Decision-Making
13 63 (11.98%) AWS
14 61 (11.60%) Azure
15 58 (11.03%) Generative AI
16 57 (10.84%) Mathematics
16 57 (10.84%) Roadmaps
17 54 (10.27%) LLM
18 52 (9.89%) Natural Language Processing
19 51 (9.70%) Deep Learning
19 51 (9.70%) Visualisation
20 50 (9.51%) PyTorch
21 46 (8.75%) GCP
22 45 (8.56%) CI/CD
23 44 (8.37%) Predictive Modelling
24 42 (7.98%) TensorFlow
25 41 (7.79%) Agile
25 41 (7.79%) Feature Engineering
26 40 (7.60%) Software Engineering
27 39 (7.41%) Validation

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 24 (4.56%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.14%) SAS
3 2 (0.38%) Apache
3 2 (0.38%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.76%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.38%) SPSS
4 1 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 63 (11.98%) AWS
2 61 (11.60%) Azure
3 46 (8.75%) GCP
4 28 (5.32%) Power Platform
5 16 (3.04%) SaaS
6 11 (2.09%) Azure Machine Learning
7 9 (1.71%) dbt
8 6 (1.14%) Amazon SageMaker
8 6 (1.14%) Dataform
8 6 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.95%) Serverless
9 5 (0.95%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.76%) Amazon S3
10 4 (0.76%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.57%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.57%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (0.38%) Vertex AI
13 1 (0.19%) Amazon Bedrock
13 1 (0.19%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.95%) Broadband
2 4 (0.76%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.57%) 5G
4 2 (0.38%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.32%) Power BI
2 17 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
2 17 (3.23%) Tableau
3 15 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (1.90%) Looker
5 7 (1.33%) Big Data
6 6 (1.14%) Metabase
7 5 (0.95%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.76%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.57%) Delta Lake
9 3 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.57%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.19%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.19%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.19%) Flink
11 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.19%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.19%) Redis
Development Applications
1 22 (4.18%) Git
2 12 (2.28%) MLflow
3 2 (0.38%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.19%) JIRA
General
1 116 (22.05%) Finance
2 74 (14.07%) Analytical Skills
3 53 (10.08%) Social Skills
4 48 (9.13%) Banking
5 37 (7.03%) Retail
6 31 (5.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (5.13%) Marketing
8 26 (4.94%) Public Sector
9 18 (3.42%) Financial Institution
10 17 (3.23%) Games
11 15 (2.85%) Legal
12 12 (2.28%) Advertising
13 11 (2.09%) Manufacturing
14 10 (1.90%) Law
15 9 (1.71%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (1.14%) Automotive
16 6 (1.14%) Wearables
17 5 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
17 5 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
17 5 (0.95%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (9.51%) PyTorch
2 42 (7.98%) TensorFlow
3 29 (5.51%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.56%) Hugging Face
4 24 (4.56%) Pandas
5 15 (2.85%) SpaCy
6 13 (2.47%) NumPy
7 12 (2.28%) XGBoost
8 9 (1.71%) LangChain
9 8 (1.52%) PySpark
10 5 (0.95%) LlamaIndex
11 4 (0.76%) SciPy
11 4 (0.76%) Seaborn
11 4 (0.76%) Streamlit
12 2 (0.38%) Flash
12 2 (0.38%) Google JAX
12 2 (0.38%) JAX
12 2 (0.38%) LangGraph
12 2 (0.38%) LightGBM
12 2 (0.38%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.27%) Algorithms
2 15 (2.85%) e-Learning
3 9 (1.71%) AI Agents
3 9 (1.71%) Credit Risk
4 7 (1.33%) Cloud Native
4 7 (1.33%) Hedge funds
4 7 (1.33%) Social Media
5 6 (1.14%) Life Science
6 5 (0.95%) Data Structures
6 5 (0.95%) Pricing Data
7 3 (0.57%) Clustering
7 3 (0.57%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.38%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.38%) FMCG
8 2 (0.38%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.38%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.19%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.19%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.19%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.57%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 523 (99.43%) Data Science
2 272 (51.71%) Machine Learning
3 207 (39.35%) AI
4 165 (31.37%) Analytics
5 80 (15.21%) Actionable Insight
6 77 (14.64%) MLOps
7 74 (14.07%) Mentoring
8 71 (13.50%) Statistics
9 65 (12.36%) Decision-Making
10 58 (11.03%) Generative AI
11 57 (10.84%) Mathematics
11 57 (10.84%) Roadmaps
12 54 (10.27%) LLM
13 52 (9.89%) Natural Language Processing
14 51 (9.70%) Deep Learning
14 51 (9.70%) Visualisation
15 45 (8.56%) CI/CD
16 44 (8.37%) Predictive Modelling
17 41 (7.79%) Agile
17 41 (7.79%) Feature Engineering
Programming Languages
1 219 (41.63%) Python
2 123 (23.38%) SQL
3 34 (6.46%) R
4 6 (1.14%) Julia
5 4 (0.76%) C
5 4 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.76%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.57%) C++
7 2 (0.38%) Bash
7 2 (0.38%) Java
7 2 (0.38%) VBA
8 1 (0.19%) C#
8 1 (0.19%) LookML
Qualifications
1 79 (15.02%) Degree
2 37 (7.03%) Security Cleared
3 26 (4.94%) DV Cleared
3 26 (4.94%) Master's Degree
4 23 (4.37%) PhD
5 16 (3.04%) DBS Check
6 5 (0.95%) SC Cleared
7 3 (0.57%) CISSP
7 3 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
8 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (0.38%) GIAC
8 2 (0.38%) SANS
9 1 (0.19%) ACCA
9 1 (0.19%) CEH
9 1 (0.19%) CIMA
9 1 (0.19%) CISM
9 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.70%) Data Quality
2 6 (1.14%) GDPR
3 5 (0.95%) EU AI Act
4 4 (0.76%) QA
5 3 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 18 (3.42%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.95%) Terraform
3 3 (0.57%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.38%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.38%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 28 (5.32%) Databricks
2 13 (2.47%) Google
3 12 (2.28%) Microsoft
4 6 (1.14%) ServiceNow
5 3 (0.57%) LexisNexis
5 3 (0.57%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.57%) Revolut
6 2 (0.38%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.38%) SYSPRO
7 1 (0.19%) Civica
7 1 (0.19%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.19%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.19%) Northgate
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle
7 1 (0.19%) Orchard
7 1 (0.19%) PeopleSoft