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 18 May 2026.

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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 430 447
Rank change year-on-year +55 +17 +87
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 408 238 514
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.44% 0.54% 0.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.48% 0.60% 0.56%
Number of salaries quoted 272 110 251
10th Percentile £46,623 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £51,375 £51,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £64,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.53% -7.86% +7.69%
75th Percentile £85,625 £83,125 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £93,875 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% -10.77% +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 85,613 39,653 91,884
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.33% 89.71% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 56,627 23,002 67,400
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £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 £71,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.66%

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 18 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 18 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 +84 386 £70,000 +9.38% 145
UK excluding London +23 209 £60,000 +3.45% 64
London +80 182 £80,000 -5.88% 98
Work from Home +69 134 £65,000 +1.56% 65
North of England +3 66 £75,000 +44.23% 12
North West +46 54 £75,000 +66.67% 10
Midlands 0 51 £66,720 +48.27% 13
South West -68 48 £60,000 -16.66% 14
East Midlands +2 35 £70,000 +20.69% 10
South East -8 23 £40,000 -33.33% 24
West Midlands -24 16 £60,860 +35.24% 3
East of England -8 14 £86,725 +49.53% 1
Yorkshire -41 7 £66,720 +4.25% 2
North East -32 5 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
Scotland -15 2 - - 1
Wales -27 2 £40,000 -52.94%

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 394 (96.57%) Data Science
2 187 (45.83%) Machine Learning
3 161 (39.46%) Python
4 145 (35.54%) AI
5 114 (27.94%) Analytics
6 83 (20.34%) SQL
7 63 (15.44%) Degree
8 52 (12.75%) Visualisation
9 48 (11.76%) Actionable Insight
10 47 (11.52%) Security Cleared
11 44 (10.78%) Decision-Making
11 44 (10.78%) Statistics
12 43 (10.54%) Azure
12 43 (10.54%) Mathematics
13 42 (10.29%) Mentoring
14 41 (10.05%) Power BI
14 41 (10.05%) Power Platform
15 38 (9.31%) AWS
15 38 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
16 37 (9.07%) MLOps
17 36 (8.82%) LLM
17 36 (8.82%) Predictive Modelling
18 35 (8.58%) Data Visualisation
18 35 (8.58%) PyTorch
18 35 (8.58%) R
19 33 (8.09%) DV Cleared
20 30 (7.35%) Problem-Solving
21 29 (7.11%) Data Analysis
22 28 (6.86%) Generative AI
23 27 (6.62%) Storytelling

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 (2.70%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.98%) SAS
3 2 (0.49%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.98%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.25%) SPSS
3 1 (0.25%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (2.45%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 43 (10.54%) Azure
2 41 (10.05%) Power Platform
3 38 (9.31%) AWS
4 22 (5.39%) GCP
5 11 (2.70%) dbt
6 9 (2.21%) SaaS
7 7 (1.72%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (1.47%) Dataform
9 5 (1.23%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.98%) Amazon SageMaker
10 4 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (0.98%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (0.98%) Serverless
10 4 (0.98%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.74%) Amazon S3
12 2 (0.49%) Azure Data Factory
12 2 (0.49%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.47%) Broadband
2 5 (1.23%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.74%) 5G
4 2 (0.49%) Firewall
5 1 (0.25%) Internet
5 1 (0.25%) LTE
5 1 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.25%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (10.05%) Power BI
2 24 (5.88%) Tableau
3 8 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (1.96%) Looker
3 8 (1.96%) SQL Server
4 7 (1.72%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (1.47%) Metabase
6 5 (1.23%) Big Data
7 4 (0.98%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.74%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.74%) QGIS
9 2 (0.49%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.49%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.49%) GIS
9 2 (0.49%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.49%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.25%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 10 (2.45%) Git
2 7 (1.72%) MLflow
3 1 (0.25%) JIRA
3 1 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 67 (16.42%) Finance
2 65 (15.93%) Analytical Skills
3 48 (11.76%) Retail
3 48 (11.76%) Social Skills
4 27 (6.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 27 (6.62%) Marketing
5 19 (4.66%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.43%) Banking
7 11 (2.70%) Games
8 10 (2.45%) Publishing
9 8 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.72%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.72%) Legal
11 6 (1.47%) Law
11 6 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.23%) Automotive
13 4 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.74%) Advertising
14 3 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.74%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (8.58%) PyTorch
2 25 (6.13%) TensorFlow
3 19 (4.66%) scikit-learn
4 15 (3.68%) Pandas
5 11 (2.70%) Hugging Face
6 9 (2.21%) EDI
7 7 (1.72%) PySpark
7 7 (1.72%) XGBoost
8 6 (1.47%) NumPy
8 6 (1.47%) SpaCy
9 5 (1.23%) LangChain
10 4 (0.98%) Google JAX
10 4 (0.98%) JAX
10 4 (0.98%) Streamlit
11 3 (0.74%) LlamaIndex
12 2 (0.49%) NetworkX
12 2 (0.49%) Plotly
12 2 (0.49%) Seaborn
13 1 (0.25%) GeoPandas
13 1 (0.25%) LightGBM
Miscellaneous
1 18 (4.41%) Algorithms
2 13 (3.19%) Data Structures
3 10 (2.45%) FMCG
3 10 (2.45%) Greenfield Project
4 6 (1.47%) e-Learning
4 6 (1.47%) Product Ownership
5 4 (0.98%) AI Agents
5 4 (0.98%) Cloud Native
6 3 (0.74%) Clustering
6 3 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
7 2 (0.49%) Contract for Difference
7 2 (0.49%) Credit Risk
7 2 (0.49%) Hedge funds
7 2 (0.49%) Insider Threat
7 2 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (0.49%) Social Media
8 1 (0.25%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.25%) Life Science
8 1 (0.25%) Robotics
8 1 (0.25%) Social Network
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.74%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 394 (96.57%) Data Science
2 187 (45.83%) Machine Learning
3 145 (35.54%) AI
4 114 (27.94%) Analytics
5 52 (12.75%) Visualisation
6 48 (11.76%) Actionable Insight
7 44 (10.78%) Decision-Making
7 44 (10.78%) Statistics
8 43 (10.54%) Mathematics
9 42 (10.29%) Mentoring
10 38 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
11 37 (9.07%) MLOps
12 36 (8.82%) LLM
12 36 (8.82%) Predictive Modelling
13 35 (8.58%) Data Visualisation
14 30 (7.35%) Problem-Solving
15 29 (7.11%) Data Analysis
16 28 (6.86%) Generative AI
17 27 (6.62%) Storytelling
18 23 (5.64%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 161 (39.46%) Python
2 83 (20.34%) SQL
3 35 (8.58%) R
4 6 (1.47%) Julia
5 4 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.98%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.74%) C
7 2 (0.49%) Bash
7 2 (0.49%) C++
8 1 (0.25%) C#
8 1 (0.25%) Scala
8 1 (0.25%) VBA
Qualifications
1 63 (15.44%) Degree
2 47 (11.52%) Security Cleared
3 33 (8.09%) DV Cleared
4 26 (6.37%) PhD
5 19 (4.66%) DBS Check
6 14 (3.43%) SC Cleared
7 10 (2.45%) ACCA
7 10 (2.45%) CIMA
8 9 (2.21%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.74%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.74%) CISSP
9 3 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.49%) GIAC
10 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.49%) SANS
11 1 (0.25%) CEH
11 1 (0.25%) CISM
11 1 (0.25%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (4.66%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.98%) QA
3 2 (0.49%) GDPR
4 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 12 (2.94%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.45%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.49%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.49%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.49%) Kubeflow
2 2 (0.49%) Terraform
3 1 (0.25%) Argo
Vendors
1 18 (4.41%) Databricks
2 12 (2.94%) Google
2 12 (2.94%) Microsoft
3 10 (2.45%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.47%) ServiceNow
5 2 (0.49%) Civica
5 2 (0.49%) Northgate
5 2 (0.49%) Orchard
6 1 (0.25%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.25%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.25%) OpenAI