Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 January 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 462 458 375
Rank change year-on-year -4 -83 +143
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 192 252 429
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.48% 0.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.51% 0.74%
Number of salaries quoted 125 97 211
10th Percentile £42,500 £37,650 £45,750
25th Percentile £52,500 £51,250 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -14.98% +8.58%
75th Percentile £87,500 £75,000 £87,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £88,500 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% -11.54% +9.99%

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 55,541 49,002 57,717
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.82% 92.63% 95.20%
Number of salaries quoted 34,360 25,280 44,689
10th Percentile £28,697 £33,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £40,988
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,272 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -5.04%

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 20 January 2026.

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 20 January 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 +36 181 £65,000 +8.33% 147
London +77 110 £80,000 +18.52% 64
UK excluding London -23 77 £60,000 +4.35% 108
Work from Home +37 58 £60,000 - 89
North of England -34 21 £62,500 +13.64% 15
South West +13 17 £60,000 -14.29% 12
North West +8 17 £61,418 +6.81% 11
South East +28 16 £40,000 -31.03% 52
Midlands +8 10 £58,750 +30.56% 6
East of England +30 7 £90,000 +55.17% 15
East Midlands -3 6 £53,945 -6.99% 4
Scotland -23 5 £100,000 - 6
West Midlands +5 4 £70,000 +64.71% 2
North East +1 2 £62,500 +56.78% 2
Yorkshire -32 2 £62,500 -6.37% 2
Northern Ireland -7 1 £40,000 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 20 January 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.

1 184 (95.83%) Data Science
2 106 (55.21%) Python
3 105 (54.69%) Machine Learning
4 82 (42.71%) AI
5 76 (39.58%) Analytics
6 53 (27.60%) Degree
7 49 (25.52%) SQL
8 44 (22.92%) Visualisation
9 40 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
10 38 (19.79%) PhD
11 34 (17.71%) Azure
12 33 (17.19%) Decision-Making
12 33 (17.19%) Predictive Modelling
13 29 (15.10%) Statistics
14 28 (14.58%) AWS
14 28 (14.58%) Mathematics
15 27 (14.06%) Natural Language Processing
15 27 (14.06%) Power BI
15 27 (14.06%) Power Platform
16 26 (13.54%) Business Intelligence
16 26 (13.54%) Master's Degree
17 25 (13.02%) LLM
18 24 (12.50%) Storytelling
19 23 (11.98%) Security Cleared
20 21 (10.94%) MLOps
20 21 (10.94%) PyTorch
21 20 (10.42%) Actionable Insight
22 19 (9.90%) Generative AI
23 18 (9.38%) Business Strategy
23 18 (9.38%) Data Visualisation

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 10 (5.21%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.04%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 3 (1.56%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 7 (3.65%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 34 (17.71%) Azure
2 28 (14.58%) AWS
3 27 (14.06%) Power Platform
4 15 (7.81%) GCP
5 7 (3.65%) dbt
5 7 (3.65%) Snowflake
6 5 (2.60%) Dagster
7 3 (1.56%) Google Analytics
8 2 (1.04%) Prefect
8 2 (1.04%) SaaS
9 1 (0.52%) Adobe Analytics
9 1 (0.52%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.52%) Amazon SageMaker
9 1 (0.52%) Azure AI
9 1 (0.52%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.52%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.52%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.52%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.52%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.08%) Broadband
2 1 (0.52%) Internet
2 1 (0.52%) LTE
2 1 (0.52%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.52%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (14.06%) Power BI
2 16 (8.33%) Tableau
3 7 (3.65%) Amazon Redshift
3 7 (3.65%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (2.08%) Big Data
6 3 (1.56%) QGIS
7 2 (1.04%) Data Mining
7 2 (1.04%) GIS
7 2 (1.04%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.04%) Spatial Data
8 1 (0.52%) ClickHouse
8 1 (0.52%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.52%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.52%) Mixpanel
8 1 (0.52%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.52%) Parquet
8 1 (0.52%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.52%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (5.73%) Git
2 4 (2.08%) MLflow
General
1 41 (21.35%) Finance
1 41 (21.35%) Social Skills
2 36 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (10.94%) Retail
4 20 (10.42%) Marketing
5 9 (4.69%) Banking
5 9 (4.69%) Games
6 8 (4.17%) Financial Institution
6 8 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (4.17%) Law
7 7 (3.65%) Publishing
8 6 (3.13%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (2.60%) Manufacturing
10 4 (2.08%) Legal
10 4 (2.08%) Public Sector
11 3 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.52%) Digital Economy
12 1 (0.52%) Health Technology
12 1 (0.52%) Social Housing
12 1 (0.52%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (10.94%) PyTorch
2 16 (8.33%) TensorFlow
3 13 (6.77%) scikit-learn
4 12 (6.25%) Pandas
4 12 (6.25%) PySpark
5 8 (4.17%) EDI
6 7 (3.65%) NumPy
6 7 (3.65%) SpaCy
7 5 (2.60%) LangChain
7 5 (2.60%) XGBoost
8 4 (2.08%) Google JAX
8 4 (2.08%) JAX
9 3 (1.56%) Kafka
10 2 (1.04%) Hugging Face
10 2 (1.04%) LightGBM
10 2 (1.04%) NetworkX
10 2 (1.04%) pydantic
10 2 (1.04%) Streamlit
11 1 (0.52%) Faiss
11 1 (0.52%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 20 (10.42%) Algorithms
2 8 (4.17%) Data Structures
2 8 (4.17%) Greenfield Project
3 7 (3.65%) e-Learning
3 7 (3.65%) FMCG
4 5 (2.60%) Reinsurance
5 4 (2.08%) Cloud Native
5 4 (2.08%) Life Science
5 4 (2.08%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.56%) Fixed Income
7 2 (1.04%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.04%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.04%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.52%) Biopharmaceutical
8 1 (0.52%) Digital Media
8 1 (0.52%) Genomics
8 1 (0.52%) Omics
8 1 (0.52%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.52%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (95.83%) Data Science
2 105 (54.69%) Machine Learning
3 82 (42.71%) AI
4 76 (39.58%) Analytics
5 44 (22.92%) Visualisation
6 40 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
7 33 (17.19%) Decision-Making
7 33 (17.19%) Predictive Modelling
8 29 (15.10%) Statistics
9 28 (14.58%) Mathematics
10 27 (14.06%) Natural Language Processing
11 26 (13.54%) Business Intelligence
12 25 (13.02%) LLM
13 24 (12.50%) Storytelling
14 21 (10.94%) MLOps
15 20 (10.42%) Actionable Insight
16 19 (9.90%) Generative AI
17 18 (9.38%) Business Strategy
17 18 (9.38%) Data Visualisation
17 18 (9.38%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 106 (55.21%) Python
2 49 (25.52%) SQL
3 13 (6.77%) R
4 1 (0.52%) C++
4 1 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (27.60%) Degree
2 38 (19.79%) PhD
3 26 (13.54%) Master's Degree
4 23 (11.98%) Security Cleared
5 18 (9.38%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.21%) DBS Check
6 10 (5.21%) SC Cleared
7 7 (3.65%) ACCA
7 7 (3.65%) CIMA
8 3 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.52%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.52%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.21%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.04%) GDPR
2 2 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.52%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.52%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 12 (6.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.56%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.52%) Argo
Vendors
1 9 (4.69%) Salesforce
2 8 (4.17%) Databricks
2 8 (4.17%) Microsoft
3 3 (1.56%) Google
4 2 (1.04%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (0.52%) Adobe
5 1 (0.52%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.52%) Amplitude
5 1 (0.52%) Civica
5 1 (0.52%) Cognos
5 1 (0.52%) Facebook
5 1 (0.52%) Foundry
5 1 (0.52%) Mapbox
5 1 (0.52%) Marketo
5 1 (0.52%) Northgate
5 1 (0.52%) Orchard