Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 25 May 2026.

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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 439 440
Rank change year-on-year +65 +1 +99
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 425 221 513
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.52% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.49% 0.58% 0.55%
Number of salaries quoted 281 93 251
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £56,554 £51,750 £51,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,810 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.37% -5.99% +7.69%
75th Percentile £87,500 £83,750 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £94,250 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £60,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +2.36% -7.69% +18.18%

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 86,624 38,246 93,392
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.40% 89.23% 94.70%
Number of salaries quoted 57,551 21,495 68,448
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,750 £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 £70,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £51,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -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 25 May 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 25 May 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 +102 401 £70,000 +9.38% 147
UK excluding London +22 217 £61,418 +2.36% 76
London +82 187 £80,000 -5.88% 94
Work from Home +52 137 £65,000 -0.62% 58
North of England +12 70 £75,000 +44.23% 13
North West +40 57 £75,000 +66.67% 12
Midlands +2 55 £66,720 +48.27% 15
South West -63 50 £60,000 -15.49% 15
East Midlands +13 39 £70,000 +75.36% 11
South East -9 21 £40,000 -33.33% 28
West Midlands -30 16 £60,860 +23.57% 4
East of England -3 14 £86,725 +66.78% 2
Yorkshire -46 7 £66,720 +4.25% 1
North East -36 6 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
Scotland -13 2 - - 1
Wales -32 2 £40,000 -52.94% 3

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

For the 6 months to 25 May 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.

1 412 (96.94%) Data Science
2 195 (45.88%) Machine Learning
3 168 (39.53%) Python
4 151 (35.53%) AI
5 120 (28.24%) Analytics
6 85 (20.00%) SQL
7 67 (15.76%) Degree
8 51 (12.00%) Actionable Insight
8 51 (12.00%) Visualisation
9 48 (11.29%) Decision-Making
10 47 (11.06%) Security Cleared
10 47 (11.06%) Statistics
11 43 (10.12%) Azure
11 43 (10.12%) Mathematics
11 43 (10.12%) Mentoring
12 39 (9.18%) LLM
12 39 (9.18%) MLOps
13 38 (8.94%) AWS
13 38 (8.94%) Power BI
13 38 (8.94%) Power Platform
14 36 (8.47%) Business Intelligence
14 36 (8.47%) PyTorch
14 36 (8.47%) R
15 35 (8.24%) Data Visualisation
15 35 (8.24%) Predictive Modelling
16 33 (7.76%) DV Cleared
17 31 (7.29%) Generative AI
17 31 (7.29%) Problem-Solving
18 29 (6.82%) Data Analysis
19 28 (6.59%) PhD

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 11 (2.59%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.41%) SAS
3 2 (0.47%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.94%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.47%) SPSS
4 1 (0.24%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (2.12%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 43 (10.12%) Azure
2 38 (8.94%) AWS
2 38 (8.94%) Power Platform
3 23 (5.41%) GCP
4 10 (2.35%) dbt
4 10 (2.35%) SaaS
5 7 (1.65%) Azure Machine Learning
6 6 (1.41%) Dataform
7 4 (0.94%) Amazon SageMaker
7 4 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (0.94%) Dynamics 365
7 4 (0.94%) Serverless
7 4 (0.94%) Smartsheet
8 3 (0.71%) Amazon S3
8 3 (0.71%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (0.47%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.41%) Broadband
2 5 (1.18%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.71%) 5G
4 2 (0.47%) Firewall
5 1 (0.24%) LTE
5 1 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.24%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (8.94%) Power BI
2 21 (4.94%) Tableau
3 8 (1.88%) Amazon Redshift
3 8 (1.88%) Looker
3 8 (1.88%) SQL Server
4 7 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (1.41%) Metabase
6 5 (1.18%) Big Data
7 3 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.71%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.71%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.47%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.47%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.47%) GIS
8 2 (0.47%) QGIS
8 2 (0.47%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.24%) Data Lake
9 1 (0.24%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.24%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 12 (2.82%) Git
2 7 (1.65%) MLflow
3 1 (0.24%) JIRA
3 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 70 (16.47%) Finance
2 63 (14.82%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (11.76%) Social Skills
4 47 (11.06%) Retail
5 31 (7.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 28 (6.59%) Marketing
7 20 (4.71%) Public Sector
8 17 (4.00%) Banking
9 11 (2.59%) Games
10 10 (2.35%) Publishing
11 9 (2.12%) Legal
12 8 (1.88%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.88%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.41%) Automotive
13 6 (1.41%) Law
13 6 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 4 (0.94%) Advertising
14 4 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.94%) Wearables
15 3 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (8.47%) PyTorch
2 27 (6.35%) TensorFlow
3 19 (4.47%) scikit-learn
4 14 (3.29%) Pandas
5 12 (2.82%) Hugging Face
6 9 (2.12%) EDI
7 7 (1.65%) SpaCy
7 7 (1.65%) XGBoost
8 6 (1.41%) PySpark
9 5 (1.18%) LangChain
9 5 (1.18%) NumPy
10 4 (0.94%) Google JAX
10 4 (0.94%) JAX
11 3 (0.71%) LlamaIndex
11 3 (0.71%) Streamlit
12 2 (0.47%) Plotly
12 2 (0.47%) Seaborn
13 1 (0.24%) Kaldi
13 1 (0.24%) LightGBM
13 1 (0.24%) NetworkX
Miscellaneous
1 21 (4.94%) Algorithms
2 12 (2.82%) Data Structures
3 9 (2.12%) FMCG
3 9 (2.12%) Greenfield Project
4 7 (1.65%) e-Learning
5 6 (1.41%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.94%) AI Agents
6 4 (0.94%) Cloud Native
7 3 (0.71%) Clustering
7 3 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.71%) Social Media
8 2 (0.47%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.47%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.47%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.47%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.24%) Distributed Computing
9 1 (0.24%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.24%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.24%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.71%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 412 (96.94%) Data Science
2 195 (45.88%) Machine Learning
3 151 (35.53%) AI
4 120 (28.24%) Analytics
5 51 (12.00%) Actionable Insight
5 51 (12.00%) Visualisation
6 48 (11.29%) Decision-Making
7 47 (11.06%) Statistics
8 43 (10.12%) Mathematics
8 43 (10.12%) Mentoring
9 39 (9.18%) LLM
9 39 (9.18%) MLOps
10 36 (8.47%) Business Intelligence
11 35 (8.24%) Data Visualisation
11 35 (8.24%) Predictive Modelling
12 31 (7.29%) Generative AI
12 31 (7.29%) Problem-Solving
13 29 (6.82%) Data Analysis
14 25 (5.88%) Deep Learning
14 25 (5.88%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 168 (39.53%) Python
2 85 (20.00%) SQL
3 36 (8.47%) R
4 6 (1.41%) Julia
5 4 (0.94%) C
5 4 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.94%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.47%) Bash
6 2 (0.47%) C++
7 1 (0.24%) C#
7 1 (0.24%) VBA
Qualifications
1 67 (15.76%) Degree
2 47 (11.06%) Security Cleared
3 33 (7.76%) DV Cleared
4 28 (6.59%) PhD
5 18 (4.24%) DBS Check
6 14 (3.29%) SC Cleared
7 13 (3.06%) Master's Degree
8 9 (2.12%) ACCA
8 9 (2.12%) CIMA
9 3 (0.71%) CISSP
9 3 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.47%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.47%) GIAC
10 2 (0.47%) SANS
11 1 (0.24%) CEH
11 1 (0.24%) CISM
11 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.24%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.00%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.94%) QA
3 1 (0.24%) GDPR
System Software
1 12 (2.82%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.35%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.47%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.47%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.47%) Kubeflow
2 2 (0.47%) Terraform
Vendors
1 17 (4.00%) Databricks
2 11 (2.59%) Google
2 11 (2.59%) Microsoft
3 9 (2.12%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.41%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.24%) Civica
5 1 (0.24%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.24%) Northgate
5 1 (0.24%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.24%) Orchard