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 22 September 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 526 488
Rank change year-on-year +195 -38 +17
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 625 147 315
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.30% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.58% 0.34% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 396 84 139
10th Percentile £52,500 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £62,500 £52,500 £49,698
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £71,250 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +12.28% +13.31% +3.93%
75th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £103,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +36.36% -8.33% -2.04%

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 108,269 43,856 72,591
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.18% 89.61% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,176 25,746 43,293
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,500 £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 £74,258 £74,100
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
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 22 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 22 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 +187 579 £80,000 +10.34% 635
UK excluding London +110 332 £75,000 +36.36% 235
London +87 266 £90,000 +12.50% 424
Work from Home +76 160 £70,000 - 282
North of England +27 114 £80,000 +45.45% 56
Midlands +17 70 £67,500 -3.05% 41
East Midlands +30 65 £60,000 -25.00% 19
North West +10 65 £75,000 +36.36% 33
South East +13 63 £80,000 +88.24% 47
South West -33 51 £70,000 - 33
Yorkshire -8 37 £84,387 +53.43% 20
Wales - 14 £75,000 - 19
North East -53 12 £80,000 +53.85% 3
East of England -21 9 £60,000 +2.13% 22
Northern Ireland -75 7 £72,500 +81.25% 7
West Midlands -47 5 £75,000 +26.58% 22
Scotland +6 4 £75,013 +66.70% 14

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 623 (99.68%) Data Science
2 335 (53.60%) Machine Learning
3 260 (41.60%) AI
4 235 (37.60%) Python
5 187 (29.92%) Analytics
6 122 (19.52%) SQL
7 94 (15.04%) MLOps
8 83 (13.28%) Actionable Insight
9 82 (13.12%) Degree
10 81 (12.96%) Generative AI
11 79 (12.64%) Statistics
12 78 (12.48%) Natural Language Processing
13 76 (12.16%) Azure
13 76 (12.16%) Mentoring
14 68 (10.88%) AWS
15 64 (10.24%) Predictive Modelling
16 63 (10.08%) LLM
17 62 (9.92%) CI/CD
18 61 (9.76%) Roadmaps
19 60 (9.60%) Decision-Making
20 55 (8.80%) GCP
21 53 (8.48%) Deep Learning
22 50 (8.00%) Mathematics
23 49 (7.84%) Problem-Solving
24 48 (7.68%) Validation
25 47 (7.52%) Agile
25 47 (7.52%) Feature Engineering
25 47 (7.52%) Software Engineering
26 46 (7.36%) PyTorch
27 44 (7.04%) 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 39 (6.24%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.96%) SAS
3 4 (0.64%) Apache
4 3 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.48%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.16%) R Markdown
Applications
1 4 (0.64%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) SPSS
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 76 (12.16%) Azure
2 68 (10.88%) AWS
3 55 (8.80%) GCP
4 19 (3.04%) SaaS
5 18 (2.88%) Azure Machine Learning
6 17 (2.72%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.12%) dbt
8 5 (0.80%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (0.80%) Serverless
9 4 (0.64%) Amazon SageMaker
9 4 (0.64%) Azure AI
9 4 (0.64%) Azure Databricks
9 4 (0.64%) Snowflake
10 3 (0.48%) Anthropic Claude
10 3 (0.48%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.48%) GitHub
10 3 (0.48%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 2 (0.32%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (0.32%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.64%) Software-Defined Radio
2 3 (0.48%) 5G
2 3 (0.48%) Broadband
3 2 (0.32%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.16%) Amazon Redshift
2 17 (2.72%) Power BI
3 14 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.76%) Tableau
5 7 (1.12%) Data Lake
5 7 (1.12%) Looker
6 6 (0.96%) Big Data
7 5 (0.80%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.64%) Flink
8 4 (0.64%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.48%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (0.48%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.48%) Redis
10 2 (0.32%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.32%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.32%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.32%) Metabase
10 2 (0.32%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 33 (5.28%) Git
2 11 (1.76%) MLflow
3 2 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) JIRA
General
1 138 (22.08%) Finance
2 67 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
3 64 (10.24%) Banking
4 60 (9.60%) Social Skills
5 41 (6.56%) Retail
6 36 (5.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (4.80%) Marketing
8 26 (4.16%) Financial Institution
9 24 (3.84%) Public Sector
10 20 (3.20%) Games
11 15 (2.40%) Legal
12 13 (2.08%) Law
13 11 (1.76%) Advertising
14 8 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.96%) Manufacturing
16 6 (0.96%) Telecoms
16 6 (0.96%) Wearables
17 5 (0.80%) Automotive
17 5 (0.80%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (7.36%) PyTorch
2 40 (6.40%) TensorFlow
3 27 (4.32%) Pandas
4 26 (4.16%) scikit-learn
5 24 (3.84%) Hugging Face
6 23 (3.68%) SpaCy
7 16 (2.56%) NumPy
8 11 (1.76%) LangChain
9 10 (1.60%) PySpark
10 9 (1.44%) XGBoost
11 6 (0.96%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.96%) SciPy
12 5 (0.80%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.80%) Streamlit
12 5 (0.80%) Terraform
13 4 (0.64%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.48%) Kafka
14 3 (0.48%) Plotly
15 2 (0.32%) Google JAX
15 2 (0.32%) JAX
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.08%) Algorithms
2 23 (3.68%) e-Learning
3 15 (2.40%) AI Agents
4 10 (1.60%) Credit Risk
5 9 (1.44%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.12%) Hedge funds
6 7 (1.12%) Social Media
7 6 (0.96%) Life Science
8 5 (0.80%) Pricing Data
9 4 (0.64%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.64%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.48%) Clustering
10 3 (0.48%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.48%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.48%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.32%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.32%) Distributed Computing
11 2 (0.32%) Hackathon
11 2 (0.32%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.48%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 623 (99.68%) Data Science
2 335 (53.60%) Machine Learning
3 260 (41.60%) AI
4 187 (29.92%) Analytics
5 94 (15.04%) MLOps
6 83 (13.28%) Actionable Insight
7 81 (12.96%) Generative AI
8 79 (12.64%) Statistics
9 78 (12.48%) Natural Language Processing
10 76 (12.16%) Mentoring
11 64 (10.24%) Predictive Modelling
12 63 (10.08%) LLM
13 62 (9.92%) CI/CD
14 61 (9.76%) Roadmaps
15 60 (9.60%) Decision-Making
16 53 (8.48%) Deep Learning
17 50 (8.00%) Mathematics
18 49 (7.84%) Problem-Solving
19 48 (7.68%) Validation
20 47 (7.52%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 235 (37.60%) Python
2 122 (19.52%) SQL
3 20 (3.20%) R
4 4 (0.64%) C
4 4 (0.64%) Java
5 3 (0.48%) C++
5 3 (0.48%) Scala
6 2 (0.32%) Bash
6 2 (0.32%) Julia
6 2 (0.32%) VBA
7 1 (0.16%) C#
7 1 (0.16%) Gremlin
7 1 (0.16%) LookML
7 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 82 (13.12%) Degree
2 44 (7.04%) Security Cleared
3 39 (6.24%) Master's Degree
4 30 (4.80%) DV Cleared
5 29 (4.64%) PhD
6 7 (1.12%) DBS Check
6 7 (1.12%) SC Cleared
7 4 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.64%) Numerate Degree
8 3 (0.48%) CISSP
9 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
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 27 (4.32%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (0.80%) EU AI Act
2 5 (0.80%) GDPR
3 3 (0.48%) QA
4 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 17 (2.72%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (2.24%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.32%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 42 (6.72%) Databricks
2 18 (2.88%) Google
2 18 (2.88%) Microsoft
3 12 (1.92%) LexisNexis
4 11 (1.76%) Workday
5 6 (0.96%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.48%) Oracle
6 3 (0.48%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.48%) Revolut
6 3 (0.48%) Salesforce
7 2 (0.32%) SYSPRO
8 1 (0.16%) Cognizant
8 1 (0.16%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.16%) Mistral
8 1 (0.16%) New Relic
8 1 (0.16%) SAP
8 1 (0.16%) Splunk