Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £79,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 15 September 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 333 521 493
Rank change year-on-year +188 -28 +8
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 611 148 313
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.30% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.57% 0.34% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 395 86 140
10th Percentile £52,500 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £62,500 £52,500 £49,396
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £79,000 £72,500 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +8.97% +15.30% +4.80%
75th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +36.36% -8.33% -

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 106,427 44,033 73,876
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.44% 89.62% 95.26%
Number of salaries quoted 73,226 25,764 44,965
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,131 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,319 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.85% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £73,750
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 15 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 15 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 +183 565 £80,000 +10.34% 763
UK excluding London +145 331 £75,000 +36.36% 253
London +93 253 £90,000 +12.50% 549
Work from Home +70 157 £70,000 - 313
North of England +40 117 £80,000 +45.45% 74
Midlands +12 70 £70,000 +7.69% 43
North West +34 69 £75,000 +25.00% 44
East Midlands +32 65 £60,000 -25.00% 19
South East +10 57 £80,000 +88.24% 46
South West -36 51 £70,000 - 26
Yorkshire -9 36 £85,000 +54.55% 26
Wales - 14 £75,000 - 13
North East -50 12 £80,000 +53.85% 4
East of England -20 11 £65,000 +48.57% 20
Northern Ireland -71 7 £72,500 +81.25% 16
West Midlands -38 5 £75,000 +20.72% 24
Scotland +3 4 £75,013 +30.46% 16

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 609 (99.67%) Data Science
2 324 (53.03%) Machine Learning
3 254 (41.57%) AI
4 229 (37.48%) Python
5 184 (30.11%) Analytics
6 120 (19.64%) SQL
7 91 (14.89%) MLOps
8 80 (13.09%) Actionable Insight
8 80 (13.09%) Degree
8 80 (13.09%) Statistics
9 78 (12.77%) Generative AI
10 77 (12.60%) Mentoring
11 76 (12.44%) Natural Language Processing
12 73 (11.95%) Azure
13 70 (11.46%) AWS
14 62 (10.15%) CI/CD
14 62 (10.15%) LLM
15 60 (9.82%) Roadmaps
16 57 (9.33%) Decision-Making
16 57 (9.33%) Predictive Modelling
17 54 (8.84%) Deep Learning
17 54 (8.84%) GCP
18 50 (8.18%) Mathematics
19 48 (7.86%) Validation
20 47 (7.69%) Agile
20 47 (7.69%) Feature Engineering
20 47 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
20 47 (7.69%) PyTorch
20 47 (7.69%) Software Engineering
21 44 (7.20%) 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 38 (6.22%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.98%) SAS
3 3 (0.49%) Apache
3 3 (0.49%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.16%) R Markdown
Applications
1 4 (0.65%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.33%) SPSS
3 1 (0.16%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 73 (11.95%) Azure
2 70 (11.46%) AWS
3 54 (8.84%) GCP
4 19 (3.11%) Power Platform
5 18 (2.95%) SaaS
6 16 (2.62%) Azure Machine Learning
7 8 (1.31%) dbt
8 6 (0.98%) Amazon S3
8 6 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (0.98%) Serverless
9 5 (0.82%) Amazon SageMaker
10 4 (0.65%) Azure AI
10 4 (0.65%) Azure Databricks
10 4 (0.65%) Dataform
10 4 (0.65%) Snowflake
11 3 (0.49%) Anthropic Claude
11 3 (0.49%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.49%) GitHub
11 3 (0.49%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 2 (0.33%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.65%) Software-Defined Radio
2 3 (0.49%) 5G
2 3 (0.49%) Broadband
3 2 (0.33%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (4.09%) Amazon Redshift
2 19 (3.11%) Power BI
3 15 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (2.13%) Tableau
5 8 (1.31%) Looker
6 7 (1.15%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.98%) Big Data
8 5 (0.82%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.65%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.65%) Metabase
9 4 (0.65%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.49%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.49%) Flink
10 3 (0.49%) Redis
11 2 (0.33%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.33%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
12 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 31 (5.07%) Git
2 11 (1.80%) MLflow
3 2 (0.33%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) JIRA
General
1 139 (22.75%) Finance
2 69 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (10.31%) Banking
4 58 (9.49%) Social Skills
5 44 (7.20%) Retail
6 34 (5.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 31 (5.07%) Marketing
8 25 (4.09%) Financial Institution
8 25 (4.09%) Public Sector
9 18 (2.95%) Games
10 15 (2.45%) Legal
11 13 (2.13%) Law
12 11 (1.80%) Advertising
13 9 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.98%) Wearables
15 5 (0.82%) Automotive
15 5 (0.82%) Manufacturing
15 5 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.82%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (7.69%) PyTorch
2 40 (6.55%) TensorFlow
3 29 (4.75%) Pandas
4 28 (4.58%) scikit-learn
5 24 (3.93%) Hugging Face
6 22 (3.60%) SpaCy
7 17 (2.78%) NumPy
8 11 (1.80%) LangChain
9 10 (1.64%) PySpark
10 9 (1.47%) XGBoost
11 6 (0.98%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.98%) SciPy
12 5 (0.82%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.82%) Streamlit
12 5 (0.82%) Terraform
13 4 (0.65%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.49%) Kafka
15 2 (0.33%) Flash
15 2 (0.33%) Flask
15 2 (0.33%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 37 (6.06%) Algorithms
2 22 (3.60%) e-Learning
3 14 (2.29%) AI Agents
4 10 (1.64%) Credit Risk
5 9 (1.47%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.15%) Hedge funds
6 7 (1.15%) Social Media
7 6 (0.98%) Life Science
8 5 (0.82%) Pricing Data
9 4 (0.65%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.65%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.49%) Clustering
10 3 (0.49%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.33%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.33%) Distributed Computing
11 2 (0.33%) FMCG
11 2 (0.33%) Insider Threat
11 2 (0.33%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.49%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (99.67%) Data Science
2 324 (53.03%) Machine Learning
3 254 (41.57%) AI
4 184 (30.11%) Analytics
5 91 (14.89%) MLOps
6 80 (13.09%) Actionable Insight
6 80 (13.09%) Statistics
7 78 (12.77%) Generative AI
8 77 (12.60%) Mentoring
9 76 (12.44%) Natural Language Processing
10 62 (10.15%) CI/CD
10 62 (10.15%) LLM
11 60 (9.82%) Roadmaps
12 57 (9.33%) Decision-Making
12 57 (9.33%) Predictive Modelling
13 54 (8.84%) Deep Learning
14 50 (8.18%) Mathematics
15 48 (7.86%) Validation
16 47 (7.69%) Agile
16 47 (7.69%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 229 (37.48%) Python
2 120 (19.64%) SQL
3 21 (3.44%) R
4 4 (0.65%) C
4 4 (0.65%) Julia
5 3 (0.49%) C++
5 3 (0.49%) Java
6 2 (0.33%) Bash
6 2 (0.33%) Scala
6 2 (0.33%) VBA
7 1 (0.16%) C#
7 1 (0.16%) Gremlin
7 1 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 80 (13.09%) Degree
2 44 (7.20%) Security Cleared
3 37 (6.06%) Master's Degree
4 30 (4.91%) DV Cleared
5 28 (4.58%) PhD
6 10 (1.64%) DBS Check
7 7 (1.15%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.65%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.49%) CISSP
10 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.33%) GIAC
10 2 (0.33%) SANS
11 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CEH
11 1 (0.16%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.58%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (0.82%) EU AI Act
2 5 (0.82%) GDPR
3 4 (0.65%) QA
4 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 17 (2.78%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (2.29%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.33%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.33%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.33%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 42 (6.87%) Databricks
2 18 (2.95%) Google
3 17 (2.78%) Microsoft
4 11 (1.80%) LexisNexis
5 10 (1.64%) Workday
6 6 (0.98%) OpenAI
7 3 (0.49%) Oracle
7 3 (0.49%) PeopleSoft
7 3 (0.49%) Revolut
7 3 (0.49%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.33%) SYSPRO
9 1 (0.16%) Cognizant
9 1 (0.16%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.16%) Mistral