Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £67,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 October 2025.

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

6 months to
12 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 532 471 500
Rank change year-on-year -61 +29 +23
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 141 311 257
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.43% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.45% 0.47%
Number of salaries quoted 82 125 204
10th Percentile £42,500 £38,620 £43,739
25th Percentile £52,500 £50,120 £46,570
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £62,879 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.35% +0.61% -
75th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £82,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £107,250 £96,539
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year - -12.00% +8.70%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 44,123 68,674 54,167
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.76% 95.36% 95.63%
Number of salaries quoted 25,686 39,256 41,914
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £32,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,500 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £45,750 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -8.50% -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 12 October 2025.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 16 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 12 October 2025. 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 -37 126 £70,000 +11.32% 165
London +14 82 £75,000 +7.14% 112
UK excluding London -32 49 £55,000 - 100
Work from Home -52 36 £67,500 +7.35% 98
North of England -26 21 £55,000 -12.53% 12
North West -13 19 £55,000 -8.33% 10
Midlands +20 8 £69,625 +16.04% 7
South West +41 7 £70,000 +27.27% 9
South East +23 5 £42,500 -13.96% 60
East Midlands +18 5 £80,000 +77.78% 4
Scotland -12 4 £45,000 - 6
West Midlands +30 3 £59,250 -10.82% 3
East of England +1 3 £58,750 -11.32%
North East +8 1 £52,000 +1.22%
Northern Ireland +4 1 £40,000 - 3
Yorkshire -9 1 £55,000 -12.53% 2

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

For the 6 months to 12 October 2025, 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.

1 141 (100.00%) Data Science
2 122 (86.52%) Python
3 103 (73.05%) Machine Learning
4 81 (57.45%) Analytics
5 72 (51.06%) SQL
6 65 (46.10%) Degree
7 55 (39.01%) AI
8 48 (34.04%) Mathematics
8 48 (34.04%) Master's Degree
9 46 (32.62%) Statistics
10 42 (29.79%) PhD
11 41 (29.08%) Visualisation
12 40 (28.37%) Problem-Solving
12 40 (28.37%) Azure
13 39 (27.66%) AWS
14 34 (24.11%) Finance
14 34 (24.11%) Decision-Making
14 34 (24.11%) Social Skills
15 33 (23.40%) Analytical Skills
16 31 (21.99%) MLOps
17 28 (19.86%) Algorithms
18 26 (18.44%) Natural Language Processing
19 24 (17.02%) Marketing
19 24 (17.02%) DevOps
20 23 (16.31%) Computer Science
20 23 (16.31%) Predictive Modelling
21 22 (15.60%) scikit-learn
22 21 (14.89%) Pandas
22 21 (14.89%) Data Pipeline
22 21 (14.89%) LLM

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 17 (12.06%) Apache Spark
2 8 (5.67%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (3.55%) Apache
4 4 (2.84%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 4 (2.84%) Chatbot
2 3 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 40 (28.37%) Azure
2 39 (27.66%) AWS
3 20 (14.18%) GCP
4 17 (12.06%) Power Platform
5 9 (6.38%) Google Analytics
6 7 (4.96%) Adobe Analytics
7 5 (3.55%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (3.55%) Azure Machine Learning
8 4 (2.84%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.84%) dbt
8 4 (2.84%) Snowflake
9 3 (2.13%) Dagster
9 3 (2.13%) GitHub
10 2 (1.42%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (1.42%) Prefect
10 2 (1.42%) SaaS
10 2 (1.42%) Serverless
11 1 (0.71%) ChatGPT
11 1 (0.71%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.42%) Broadband
2 1 (0.71%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (12.06%) Power BI
2 16 (11.35%) Tableau
3 8 (5.67%) Relational Database
4 7 (4.96%) Amazon Redshift
5 5 (3.55%) Big Data
5 5 (3.55%) GIS
6 4 (2.84%) Data Mining
6 4 (2.84%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (2.84%) QGIS
6 4 (2.84%) Spatial Data
6 4 (2.84%) SQL Server
7 3 (2.13%) Neo4j
8 2 (1.42%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (1.42%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (1.42%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.71%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.71%) Mixpanel
9 1 (0.71%) Parquet
9 1 (0.71%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 12 (8.51%) Git
2 4 (2.84%) MLflow
General
1 34 (24.11%) Finance
1 34 (24.11%) Social Skills
2 33 (23.40%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (17.02%) Marketing
4 20 (14.18%) Law
5 14 (9.93%) Games
6 10 (7.09%) Retail
7 9 (6.38%) Banking
8 8 (5.67%) Manufacturing
9 7 (4.96%) Financial Institution
9 7 (4.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (4.96%) Public Sector
10 5 (3.55%) Legal
10 5 (3.55%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (1.42%) Advertising
11 2 (1.42%) Electronics
11 2 (1.42%) Front Office
11 2 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.71%) Aviation
12 1 (0.71%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (15.60%) scikit-learn
2 21 (14.89%) Pandas
3 16 (11.35%) PyTorch
4 15 (10.64%) TensorFlow
5 12 (8.51%) PySpark
6 10 (7.09%) NumPy
7 8 (5.67%) SpaCy
7 8 (5.67%) XGBoost
8 7 (4.96%) LangChain
9 4 (2.84%) PostGIS
10 3 (2.13%) Hugging Face
11 2 (1.42%) CSS
11 2 (1.42%) Django
11 2 (1.42%) Kafka
11 2 (1.42%) LightGBM
11 2 (1.42%) Plotly
11 2 (1.42%) pydantic
11 2 (1.42%) pytest
11 2 (1.42%) Shiny
12 1 (0.71%) SQLAlchemy
Miscellaneous
1 28 (19.86%) Algorithms
2 8 (5.67%) Self-Motivation
3 7 (4.96%) e-Learning
3 7 (4.96%) Reinsurance
4 4 (2.84%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.84%) Credit Risk
4 4 (2.84%) Life Science
5 3 (2.13%) AI Agents
5 3 (2.13%) Driving Licence
5 3 (2.13%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.42%) Biopharmaceutical
6 2 (1.42%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.71%) Blockchain
7 1 (0.71%) Digital Media
7 1 (0.71%) FMCG
7 1 (0.71%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.71%) Renewable Energy
7 1 (0.71%) Social Media
7 1 (0.71%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.71%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (100.00%) Data Science
2 103 (73.05%) Machine Learning
3 81 (57.45%) Analytics
4 55 (39.01%) AI
5 48 (34.04%) Mathematics
6 46 (32.62%) Statistics
7 41 (29.08%) Visualisation
8 40 (28.37%) Problem-Solving
9 34 (24.11%) Decision-Making
10 31 (21.99%) MLOps
11 26 (18.44%) Natural Language Processing
12 24 (17.02%) DevOps
13 23 (16.31%) Computer Science
13 23 (16.31%) Predictive Modelling
14 21 (14.89%) Data Pipeline
14 21 (14.89%) LLM
15 20 (14.18%) Data Analysis
15 20 (14.18%) Statistical Analysis
15 20 (14.18%) Statistical Modelling
16 18 (12.77%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 122 (86.52%) Python
2 72 (51.06%) SQL
3 17 (12.06%) R
4 7 (4.96%) JavaScript
5 3 (2.13%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.71%) C++
6 1 (0.71%) Java
6 1 (0.71%) Julia
Qualifications
1 65 (46.10%) Degree
2 48 (34.04%) Master's Degree
3 42 (29.79%) PhD
4 7 (4.96%) DBS Check
5 6 (4.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.42%) Numerate Degree
6 2 (1.42%) Postgraduate
7 1 (0.71%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.71%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.71%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (9.93%) Data Quality
2 4 (2.84%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.71%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (0.71%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (9.22%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (2.84%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.71%) Terraform
Vendors
1 15 (10.64%) Databricks
2 8 (5.67%) Google
2 8 (5.67%) Salesforce
2 8 (5.67%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 7 (4.96%) Adobe
3 7 (4.96%) Marketo
4 4 (2.84%) Mapinfo
5 2 (1.42%) Microsoft
5 2 (1.42%) SAP
6 1 (0.71%) Alteryx
6 1 (0.71%) Amplitude
6 1 (0.71%) Cognos
6 1 (0.71%) Facebook
6 1 (0.71%) Foundry
6 1 (0.71%) PayPal