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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 347 453 459
Rank change year-on-year +106 +6 +86
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 446 226 508
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.51% 0.50%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.58% 0.53%
Number of salaries quoted 291 98 245
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £56,554 £51,375 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,405 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.03% -6.56% +7.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £84,688 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,750 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £57,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +6.81% -11.54% +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 87,195 39,235 96,338
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.47% 89.39% 94.78%
Number of salaries quoted 58,141 22,113 70,235
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,378
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 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.90% +1.93% -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 1 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 1 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 +115 422 £70,000 +8.53% 189
UK excluding London +54 233 £61,418 +6.81% 94
London +87 192 £80,000 -4.48% 122
Work from Home +67 151 £65,000 -0.62% 80
North of England +17 71 £75,000 +43.54% 19
Midlands +17 67 £66,720 +35.47% 16
North West +35 57 £75,000 +66.67% 18
South West -56 54 £60,000 -15.49% 12
East Midlands +13 51 £70,000 +16.75% 12
South East -9 20 £40,000 -33.33% 34
West Midlands -27 16 £60,860 +23.57% 4
East of England -7 14 £86,725 +66.78% 3
Yorkshire -49 8 £70,860 +10.72% 1
North East -38 6 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 6
Scotland -12 2 - - 2
Wales -36 2 £40,000 -52.94% 2

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 434 (97.31%) Data Science
2 215 (48.21%) Machine Learning
3 187 (41.93%) Python
4 162 (36.32%) AI
5 128 (28.70%) Analytics
6 95 (21.30%) SQL
7 69 (15.47%) Degree
8 63 (14.13%) Actionable Insight
9 58 (13.00%) Statistics
10 55 (12.33%) Visualisation
11 53 (11.88%) Decision-Making
12 49 (10.99%) Mentoring
13 48 (10.76%) Azure
13 48 (10.76%) Security Cleared
14 42 (9.42%) AWS
14 42 (9.42%) MLOps
14 42 (9.42%) PyTorch
15 41 (9.19%) Mathematics
16 39 (8.74%) LLM
17 38 (8.52%) Business Intelligence
17 38 (8.52%) R
17 38 (8.52%) Roadmaps
18 37 (8.30%) Power BI
18 37 (8.30%) Power Platform
18 37 (8.30%) Predictive Modelling
19 36 (8.07%) Data Visualisation
19 36 (8.07%) Deep Learning
20 35 (7.85%) Problem-Solving
21 34 (7.62%) DV Cleared
21 34 (7.62%) Generative AI

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 (2.91%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.35%) SAS
3 2 (0.45%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.45%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.90%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.45%) SPSS
4 1 (0.22%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (1.79%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 48 (10.76%) Azure
2 42 (9.42%) AWS
3 37 (8.30%) Power Platform
4 27 (6.05%) GCP
5 10 (2.24%) dbt
5 10 (2.24%) SaaS
6 9 (2.02%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (1.35%) Dataform
8 4 (0.90%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.90%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.90%) Serverless
8 4 (0.90%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.67%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.67%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.67%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.67%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.45%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.35%) Broadband
2 5 (1.12%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.67%) 5G
4 2 (0.45%) Firewall
5 1 (0.22%) LTE
5 1 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.22%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (8.30%) Power BI
2 21 (4.71%) Tableau
3 9 (2.02%) Amazon Redshift
3 9 (2.02%) Looker
4 8 (1.79%) Big Data
4 8 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 7 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.35%) Metabase
7 3 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.67%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.67%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.45%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.45%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.45%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.45%) GIS
8 2 (0.45%) QGIS
8 2 (0.45%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.22%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.22%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.22%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 16 (3.59%) Git
2 8 (1.79%) MLflow
3 2 (0.45%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.22%) JIRA
General
1 82 (18.39%) Finance
2 68 (15.25%) Analytical Skills
3 49 (10.99%) Social Skills
4 46 (10.31%) Retail
5 33 (7.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 27 (6.05%) Marketing
7 24 (5.38%) Banking
8 20 (4.48%) Public Sector
9 12 (2.69%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.24%) Games
11 9 (2.02%) Publishing
12 8 (1.79%) Legal
12 8 (1.79%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.35%) Automotive
13 6 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (1.12%) Law
14 5 (1.12%) Wearables
15 4 (0.90%) Advertising
15 4 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (9.42%) PyTorch
2 33 (7.40%) TensorFlow
3 20 (4.48%) scikit-learn
4 17 (3.81%) Hugging Face
5 15 (3.36%) Pandas
6 9 (2.02%) EDI
7 8 (1.79%) PySpark
7 8 (1.79%) SpaCy
8 7 (1.57%) XGBoost
9 6 (1.35%) NumPy
10 5 (1.12%) LangChain
11 4 (0.90%) Google JAX
11 4 (0.90%) JAX
12 3 (0.67%) LlamaIndex
12 3 (0.67%) Streamlit
13 2 (0.45%) LightGBM
13 2 (0.45%) Plotly
13 2 (0.45%) SciPy
13 2 (0.45%) Seaborn
14 1 (0.22%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.61%) Algorithms
2 13 (2.91%) Data Structures
3 8 (1.79%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.79%) FMCG
3 8 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
4 6 (1.35%) Product Ownership
5 4 (0.90%) AI Agents
5 4 (0.90%) Cloud Native
6 3 (0.67%) Clustering
6 3 (0.67%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
6 3 (0.67%) Social Media
7 2 (0.45%) Contract for Difference
7 2 (0.45%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (0.45%) Hedge funds
7 2 (0.45%) Insider Threat
7 2 (0.45%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.45%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.22%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.22%) Educational Technology
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.67%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 434 (97.31%) Data Science
2 215 (48.21%) Machine Learning
3 162 (36.32%) AI
4 128 (28.70%) Analytics
5 63 (14.13%) Actionable Insight
6 58 (13.00%) Statistics
7 55 (12.33%) Visualisation
8 53 (11.88%) Decision-Making
9 49 (10.99%) Mentoring
10 42 (9.42%) MLOps
11 41 (9.19%) Mathematics
12 39 (8.74%) LLM
13 38 (8.52%) Business Intelligence
13 38 (8.52%) Roadmaps
14 37 (8.30%) Predictive Modelling
15 36 (8.07%) Data Visualisation
15 36 (8.07%) Deep Learning
16 35 (7.85%) Problem-Solving
17 34 (7.62%) Generative AI
18 33 (7.40%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 187 (41.93%) Python
2 95 (21.30%) SQL
3 38 (8.52%) R
4 6 (1.35%) Julia
5 4 (0.90%) C
5 4 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.90%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.45%) Bash
6 2 (0.45%) C++
6 2 (0.45%) VBA
7 1 (0.22%) C#
Qualifications
1 69 (15.47%) Degree
2 48 (10.76%) Security Cleared
3 34 (7.62%) DV Cleared
4 27 (6.05%) PhD
5 16 (3.59%) DBS Check
6 15 (3.36%) Master's Degree
7 14 (3.14%) SC Cleared
8 8 (1.79%) ACCA
8 8 (1.79%) CIMA
9 3 (0.67%) CISSP
9 3 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.67%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.45%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.45%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.45%) GIAC
10 2 (0.45%) SANS
11 1 (0.22%) CEH
11 1 (0.22%) CISM
11 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.81%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.90%) QA
3 1 (0.22%) GDPR
System Software
1 14 (3.14%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (2.47%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.67%) Kubeflow
2 3 (0.67%) Terraform
3 2 (0.45%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 2 (0.45%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 19 (4.26%) Databricks
2 11 (2.47%) Google
2 11 (2.47%) Microsoft
3 8 (1.79%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.35%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.22%) Civica
5 1 (0.22%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.22%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.22%) Northgate
5 1 (0.22%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.22%) Orchard