Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £72,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 15 June 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 354 462 466
Rank change year-on-year +108 +4 +77
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 468 214 510
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.48% 0.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.54% 0.50%
Number of salaries quoted 300 99 243
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £57,264 £52,125 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £65,810 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.17% -2.50% +3.85%
75th Percentile £83,875 £87,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £96,539
UK excluding London median annual salary £66,720 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +11.20% -4.00% +8.70%

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 87,567 39,822 102,228
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.98% 89.41% 94.73%
Number of salaries quoted 60,055 22,546 73,745
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £39,000 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - - -6.54%

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 June 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 June 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 +120 444 £73,750 +13.46% 179
UK excluding London +73 254 £66,720 +11.20% 99
London +84 193 £80,000 -4.48% 113
Work from Home +50 160 £65,000 -5.66% 75
Midlands +39 79 £66,720 +24.71% 10
North of England +26 79 £75,000 +43.54% 31
North West +47 64 £75,000 +66.67% 20
East Midlands +43 64 £70,000 +16.75% 9
South West -60 54 £60,000 -16.66% 10
South East -8 20 £40,000 -33.33% 30
East of England -7 15 £86,725 +66.78% 6
West Midlands -18 15 £55,000 +2.80% 1
Yorkshire -28 8 £70,860 +10.72% 7
North East -41 7 £80,000 +53.85% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 7
Scotland +4 2 - - 2
Wales -46 2 £40,000 -52.94% 4

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

For the 6 months to 15 June 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.

1 457 (97.65%) Data Science
2 225 (48.08%) Machine Learning
3 196 (41.88%) Python
4 165 (35.26%) AI
5 128 (27.35%) Analytics
6 101 (21.58%) SQL
7 73 (15.60%) Actionable Insight
8 69 (14.74%) Degree
9 66 (14.10%) Statistics
10 56 (11.97%) Mentoring
11 53 (11.32%) MLOps
12 51 (10.90%) Decision-Making
12 51 (10.90%) Visualisation
13 50 (10.68%) Azure
14 49 (10.47%) Roadmaps
15 47 (10.04%) PyTorch
16 46 (9.83%) Security Cleared
17 45 (9.62%) Deep Learning
18 44 (9.40%) AWS
18 44 (9.40%) Generative AI
19 41 (8.76%) Mathematics
20 40 (8.55%) LLM
21 37 (7.91%) Software Engineering
21 37 (7.91%) TensorFlow
22 35 (7.48%) Business Intelligence
22 35 (7.48%) Predictive Modelling
22 35 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
22 35 (7.48%) R
23 33 (7.05%) Data Analysis
23 33 (7.05%) Power BI

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 15 (3.21%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.28%) SAS
3 2 (0.43%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.43%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.85%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.43%) SPSS
4 1 (0.21%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.50%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 50 (10.68%) Azure
2 44 (9.40%) AWS
3 33 (7.05%) Power Platform
4 29 (6.20%) GCP
5 10 (2.14%) dbt
5 10 (2.14%) SaaS
6 9 (1.92%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (1.28%) Dataform
8 4 (0.85%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (0.85%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.85%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.85%) Serverless
8 4 (0.85%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.64%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.64%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.64%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.64%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.43%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.28%) Broadband
2 5 (1.07%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.64%) 5G
4 2 (0.43%) Firewall
5 1 (0.21%) LTE
5 1 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.21%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (7.05%) Power BI
2 20 (4.27%) Tableau
3 11 (2.35%) Amazon Redshift
4 9 (1.92%) Looker
5 8 (1.71%) Big Data
6 7 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.28%) Metabase
8 5 (1.07%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.64%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.64%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.43%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.43%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.43%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.43%) GIS
10 2 (0.43%) QGIS
10 2 (0.43%) Spatial Data
11 1 (0.21%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.21%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.21%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 16 (3.42%) Git
2 8 (1.71%) MLflow
3 2 (0.43%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.21%) JIRA
General
1 94 (20.09%) Finance
2 68 (14.53%) Analytical Skills
3 48 (10.26%) Social Skills
4 45 (9.62%) Retail
5 33 (7.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 31 (6.62%) Banking
7 27 (5.77%) Marketing
8 20 (4.27%) Public Sector
9 13 (2.78%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.14%) Games
11 9 (1.92%) Legal
11 9 (1.92%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.71%) Publishing
13 6 (1.28%) Automotive
13 6 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (1.28%) Wearables
14 5 (1.07%) Law
15 4 (0.85%) Advertising
15 4 (0.85%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (10.04%) PyTorch
2 37 (7.91%) TensorFlow
3 22 (4.70%) Hugging Face
4 20 (4.27%) scikit-learn
5 15 (3.21%) Pandas
6 10 (2.14%) SpaCy
7 9 (1.92%) EDI
8 8 (1.71%) PySpark
9 7 (1.50%) NumPy
9 7 (1.50%) XGBoost
10 5 (1.07%) LangChain
11 4 (0.85%) Google JAX
11 4 (0.85%) JAX
12 3 (0.64%) LlamaIndex
12 3 (0.64%) SciPy
12 3 (0.64%) Streamlit
13 2 (0.43%) LightGBM
13 2 (0.43%) Plotly
13 2 (0.43%) Seaborn
14 1 (0.21%) Statsmodels
Miscellaneous
1 24 (5.13%) Algorithms
2 11 (2.35%) Data Structures
3 10 (2.14%) e-Learning
4 7 (1.50%) FMCG
4 7 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (1.28%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.85%) AI Agents
6 4 (0.85%) Cloud Native
7 3 (0.64%) Clustering
7 3 (0.64%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.64%) Hedge funds
7 3 (0.64%) Social Media
8 2 (0.43%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.43%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.43%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.43%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.43%) Life Science
8 2 (0.43%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.21%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.64%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 457 (97.65%) Data Science
2 225 (48.08%) Machine Learning
3 165 (35.26%) AI
4 128 (27.35%) Analytics
5 73 (15.60%) Actionable Insight
6 66 (14.10%) Statistics
7 56 (11.97%) Mentoring
8 53 (11.32%) MLOps
9 51 (10.90%) Decision-Making
9 51 (10.90%) Visualisation
10 49 (10.47%) Roadmaps
11 45 (9.62%) Deep Learning
12 44 (9.40%) Generative AI
13 41 (8.76%) Mathematics
14 40 (8.55%) LLM
15 37 (7.91%) Software Engineering
16 35 (7.48%) Business Intelligence
16 35 (7.48%) Predictive Modelling
16 35 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
17 33 (7.05%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 196 (41.88%) Python
2 101 (21.58%) SQL
3 35 (7.48%) R
4 6 (1.28%) Julia
5 4 (0.85%) C
5 4 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.85%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.43%) Bash
6 2 (0.43%) C++
6 2 (0.43%) VBA
7 1 (0.21%) C#
Qualifications
1 69 (14.74%) Degree
2 46 (9.83%) Security Cleared
3 32 (6.84%) DV Cleared
4 27 (5.77%) PhD
5 17 (3.63%) Master's Degree
6 16 (3.42%) DBS Check
7 14 (2.99%) SC Cleared
8 7 (1.50%) ACCA
8 7 (1.50%) CIMA
9 3 (0.64%) CISSP
9 3 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.64%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.43%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.43%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.43%) GIAC
10 2 (0.43%) SANS
11 1 (0.21%) CEH
11 1 (0.21%) CISM
11 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.63%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.85%) QA
3 1 (0.21%) GDPR
System Software
1 14 (2.99%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (2.35%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.64%) Kubeflow
2 3 (0.64%) Terraform
3 2 (0.43%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 2 (0.43%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 21 (4.49%) Databricks
2 11 (2.35%) Google
2 11 (2.35%) Microsoft
3 7 (1.50%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.28%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.21%) Civica
5 1 (0.21%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.21%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.21%) Northgate
5 1 (0.21%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.21%) Orchard