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 1 December 2025.

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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 506 491 478
Rank change year-on-year -15 -13 +80
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 143 273 236
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.26% 0.42% 0.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.29% 0.45% 0.49%
Number of salaries quoted 93 122 165
10th Percentile £44,356 £37,872 £43,734
25th Percentile £54,625 £51,250 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,879 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +11.32% -10.91% +8.58%
75th Percentile £85,000 £77,188 £90,000
90th Percentile £94,000 £93,400 £104,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £58,000 £66,250
% change year-on-year +7.76% -12.45% +15.22%

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 48,887 61,129 48,339
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.28% 94.26% 95.30%
Number of salaries quoted 30,843 33,997 37,695
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £35,750 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,656 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.95% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -

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 1 December 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 1 December 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 +15 136 £65,000 +3.37% 84
London +45 89 £75,000 +9.17% 57
UK excluding London -26 53 £62,500 +7.76% 59
Work from Home +10 35 £57,500 -8.55% 45
North of England -22 18 £62,500 -0.60%
North West +28 13 £65,000 +1.66%
Midlands +35 11 £59,250 +24.74% 16
South East +33 9 £55,000 -4.35% 28
East Midlands +27 8 £53,945 -6.99% 14
South West +16 6 £85,000 +28.30% 7
Scotland -6 5 £100,000 - 8
West Midlands +35 3 £59,250 +48.13% 2
East of England +27 3 £58,750 +1.29%
Yorkshire -19 3 £62,500 -0.60%
North East +5 2 £62,500 +21.66%
Northern Ireland -3 1 £40,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 1 December 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 (98.60%) Data Science
2 103 (72.03%) Python
3 96 (67.13%) Machine Learning
4 69 (48.25%) Analytics
5 59 (41.26%) AI
5 59 (41.26%) SQL
6 50 (34.97%) Degree
7 44 (30.77%) Visualisation
8 37 (25.87%) PhD
9 36 (25.17%) Problem-Solving
10 35 (24.48%) Master's Degree
11 34 (23.78%) Mathematics
12 33 (23.08%) AWS
12 33 (23.08%) Decision-Making
13 32 (22.38%) Azure
14 31 (21.68%) Statistics
15 27 (18.88%) MLOps
15 27 (18.88%) Predictive Modelling
16 24 (16.78%) LLM
16 24 (16.78%) Natural Language Processing
17 23 (16.08%) DevOps
18 21 (14.69%) Statistical Modelling
19 20 (13.99%) Statistical Analysis
20 19 (13.29%) Mentoring
21 18 (12.59%) GCP
22 17 (11.89%) Business Intelligence
22 17 (11.89%) CI/CD
22 17 (11.89%) Data Pipeline
22 17 (11.89%) Power BI
22 17 (11.89%) Power Platform

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 13 (9.09%) Apache Spark
2 6 (4.20%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (2.10%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.70%) Apache
Applications
1 3 (2.10%) Chatbot
2 2 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.40%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 33 (23.08%) AWS
2 32 (22.38%) Azure
3 18 (12.59%) GCP
4 17 (11.89%) Power Platform
5 8 (5.59%) Snowflake
6 6 (4.20%) dbt
7 5 (3.50%) Dagster
8 3 (2.10%) Google Analytics
9 2 (1.40%) Amazon SageMaker
9 2 (1.40%) GitHub
9 2 (1.40%) Prefect
9 2 (1.40%) SaaS
10 1 (0.70%) Anthropic Claude
10 1 (0.70%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.70%) Azure AI
10 1 (0.70%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.70%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.70%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.70%) Serverless
10 1 (0.70%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.10%) Broadband
2 1 (0.70%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (11.89%) Power BI
2 11 (7.69%) Tableau
3 7 (4.90%) Amazon Redshift
4 5 (3.50%) Big Data
4 5 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (2.80%) Data Mining
5 4 (2.80%) Geospatial Data
5 4 (2.80%) GIS
5 4 (2.80%) QGIS
5 4 (2.80%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.10%) Spatial Data
6 3 (2.10%) SQL Server
7 2 (1.40%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (1.40%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.70%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.70%) Mixpanel
8 1 (0.70%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.70%) Parquet
8 1 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (5.59%) Git
2 4 (2.80%) MLflow
General
1 37 (25.87%) Finance
2 35 (24.48%) Social Skills
3 30 (20.98%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (12.59%) Marketing
5 13 (9.09%) Games
5 13 (9.09%) Law
6 10 (6.99%) Retail
7 9 (6.29%) Banking
8 7 (4.90%) Financial Institution
8 7 (4.90%) Manufacturing
9 6 (4.20%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (3.50%) Public Sector
11 3 (2.10%) Legal
11 3 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (1.40%) Advertising
12 2 (1.40%) Publishing
13 1 (0.70%) Billing
13 1 (0.70%) Electronics
13 1 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.70%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (11.89%) scikit-learn
2 15 (10.49%) Pandas
3 14 (9.79%) PyTorch
4 12 (8.39%) PySpark
4 12 (8.39%) TensorFlow
5 8 (5.59%) NumPy
6 7 (4.90%) SpaCy
6 7 (4.90%) XGBoost
7 6 (4.20%) LangChain
8 4 (2.80%) PostGIS
9 2 (1.40%) Django
9 2 (1.40%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.40%) Kafka
9 2 (1.40%) LightGBM
9 2 (1.40%) pydantic
9 2 (1.40%) pytest
9 2 (1.40%) Streamlit
10 1 (0.70%) Faiss
10 1 (0.70%) FastAPI
10 1 (0.70%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 22 (15.38%) Algorithms
2 7 (4.90%) e-Learning
3 5 (3.50%) Reinsurance
4 4 (2.80%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.80%) Life Science
5 3 (2.10%) Credit Risk
5 3 (2.10%) Fixed Income
5 3 (2.10%) FMCG
5 3 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.40%) AI Agents
6 2 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.40%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.40%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.40%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.70%) Biopharmaceutical
7 1 (0.70%) Genomics
7 1 (0.70%) IoT
7 1 (0.70%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.70%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (98.60%) Data Science
2 96 (67.13%) Machine Learning
3 69 (48.25%) Analytics
4 59 (41.26%) AI
5 44 (30.77%) Visualisation
6 36 (25.17%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (23.78%) Mathematics
8 33 (23.08%) Decision-Making
9 31 (21.68%) Statistics
10 27 (18.88%) MLOps
10 27 (18.88%) Predictive Modelling
11 24 (16.78%) LLM
11 24 (16.78%) Natural Language Processing
12 23 (16.08%) DevOps
13 21 (14.69%) Statistical Modelling
14 20 (13.99%) Statistical Analysis
15 19 (13.29%) Mentoring
16 17 (11.89%) Business Intelligence
16 17 (11.89%) CI/CD
16 17 (11.89%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 103 (72.03%) Python
2 59 (41.26%) SQL
3 10 (6.99%) R
4 3 (2.10%) JavaScript
5 2 (1.40%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.70%) Scala
Qualifications
1 50 (34.97%) Degree
2 37 (25.87%) PhD
3 35 (24.48%) Master's Degree
4 10 (6.99%) DBS Check
5 3 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.40%) ACCA
6 2 (1.40%) CIMA
6 2 (1.40%) Numerate Degree
6 2 (1.40%) Postgraduate
6 2 (1.40%) Security Cleared
7 1 (0.70%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.70%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.70%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.70%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.69%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.40%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.40%) GDPR
2 2 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.70%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.70%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 12 (8.39%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (2.10%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.70%) Argo
Vendors
1 11 (7.69%) Databricks
2 5 (3.50%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.80%) Salesforce
4 3 (2.10%) Google
4 3 (2.10%) Mapinfo
5 2 (1.40%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6 1 (0.70%) Adobe
6 1 (0.70%) Alteryx
6 1 (0.70%) Amplitude
6 1 (0.70%) Civica
6 1 (0.70%) Cognos
6 1 (0.70%) Facebook
6 1 (0.70%) Foundry
6 1 (0.70%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.70%) Marketo
6 1 (0.70%) Northgate
6 1 (0.70%) Orchard
6 1 (0.70%) SAP