Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £66,720 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 March 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 458 407 433
Rank change year-on-year -51 +26 +89
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 245 257 479
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.60% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.66% 0.60%
Number of salaries quoted 176 111 239
10th Percentile £46,250 £37,789 £45,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £66,720 £60,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.20% -14.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £82,273 £76,750 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £91,250 £106,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% -10.77% +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 68,739 38,903 80,284
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.93% 90.47% 94.61%
Number of salaries quoted 43,768 23,119 61,505
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £43,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,934
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -5.23%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 -14 232 £66,720 +11.20% 137
London +56 124 £75,000 - 87
UK excluding London -78 115 £60,000 +3.45% 78
Work from Home -18 74 £60,000 - 43
North of England -43 29 £61,959 +12.65% 13
South West -54 28 £60,000 -16.66% 9
Midlands -20 26 £55,000 +22.22% 16
North West -15 21 £61,418 +11.67% 10
South East -15 16 £40,000 -32.20% 35
West Midlands -4 14 £55,000 +22.22% 4
East Midlands -21 12 £62,500 +7.76% 12
East of England -7 8 £86,725 +49.53% 3
Scotland -35 5 £100,000 +42.86%
Yorkshire -46 5 £62,500 -2.34% 1
North East -23 3 £62,500 +56.78% 2
Northern Ireland -30 3 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 17 March 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.

1 233 (95.10%) Data Science
2 110 (44.90%) Machine Learning
2 110 (44.90%) Python
3 104 (42.45%) AI
4 85 (34.69%) Analytics
5 60 (24.49%) SQL
6 55 (22.45%) Degree
7 53 (21.63%) Visualisation
8 51 (20.82%) Decision-Making
9 38 (15.51%) Power BI
9 38 (15.51%) Power Platform
10 37 (15.10%) Business Intelligence
10 37 (15.10%) Security Cleared
11 34 (13.88%) Predictive Modelling
12 33 (13.47%) Mathematics
13 32 (13.06%) Problem-Solving
14 31 (12.65%) DV Cleared
15 28 (11.43%) Actionable Insight
15 28 (11.43%) Azure
15 28 (11.43%) R
16 27 (11.02%) Data Visualisation
16 27 (11.02%) PhD
17 25 (10.20%) LLM
18 24 (9.80%) Statistics
18 24 (9.80%) Storytelling
19 23 (9.39%) Data Analysis
20 22 (8.98%) Data Modelling
20 22 (8.98%) Tableau
21 21 (8.57%) Generative AI
22 20 (8.16%) AWS

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 5 (2.04%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (4.08%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 38 (15.51%) Power Platform
2 28 (11.43%) Azure
3 20 (8.16%) AWS
4 10 (4.08%) dbt
4 10 (4.08%) Snowflake
5 6 (2.45%) GCP
6 4 (1.63%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
6 4 (1.63%) Smartsheet
7 3 (1.22%) Dagster
7 3 (1.22%) Dataform
8 2 (0.82%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.41%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.41%) Amazon SageMaker
9 1 (0.41%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (0.41%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.41%) Google Analytics
9 1 (0.41%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.41%) SaaS
9 1 (0.41%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.04%) Broadband
2 1 (0.41%) Internet
2 1 (0.41%) LTE
2 1 (0.41%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.41%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (15.51%) Power BI
2 22 (8.98%) Tableau
3 8 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (3.27%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.04%) Big Data
5 3 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.22%) Looker
5 3 (1.22%) Metabase
5 3 (1.22%) QGIS
6 2 (0.82%) Data Mining
6 2 (0.82%) GIS
6 2 (0.82%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.82%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.82%) Spatial Data
7 1 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.41%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.41%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.41%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (3.27%) Git
1 8 (3.27%) MLflow
General
1 43 (17.55%) Social Skills
2 40 (16.33%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (12.65%) Finance
4 26 (10.61%) Retail
5 18 (7.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (7.35%) Marketing
6 13 (5.31%) Public Sector
7 10 (4.08%) Publishing
8 7 (2.86%) Law
9 6 (2.45%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Financial Institution
11 3 (1.22%) Games
11 3 (1.22%) Legal
11 3 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.82%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.82%) Banking
12 2 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.82%) Social Housing
13 1 (0.41%) Health Technology
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.16%) PyTorch
2 18 (7.35%) TensorFlow
3 11 (4.49%) scikit-learn
4 9 (3.67%) EDI
5 6 (2.45%) XGBoost
6 4 (1.63%) Google JAX
6 4 (1.63%) JAX
7 3 (1.22%) LangChain
7 3 (1.22%) PySpark
8 2 (0.82%) Kafka
8 2 (0.82%) NetworkX
8 2 (0.82%) NumPy
8 2 (0.82%) Pandas
8 2 (0.82%) SpaCy
8 2 (0.82%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.41%) Django
9 1 (0.41%) Flask
9 1 (0.41%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.41%) SciPy
9 1 (0.41%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.31%) Algorithms
2 11 (4.49%) Data Structures
3 10 (4.08%) FMCG
3 10 (4.08%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (2.04%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.22%) Fixed Income
6 2 (0.82%) AI Agents
6 2 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (0.82%) Contract for Difference
6 2 (0.82%) Educational Technology
6 2 (0.82%) e-Learning
7 1 (0.41%) Cloud Native
7 1 (0.41%) Credit Risk
7 1 (0.41%) FPGA
7 1 (0.41%) Genomics
7 1 (0.41%) Life Science
7 1 (0.41%) Omics
7 1 (0.41%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.41%) Social Network
7 1 (0.41%) Tandem
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (95.10%) Data Science
2 110 (44.90%) Machine Learning
3 104 (42.45%) AI
4 85 (34.69%) Analytics
5 53 (21.63%) Visualisation
6 51 (20.82%) Decision-Making
7 37 (15.10%) Business Intelligence
8 34 (13.88%) Predictive Modelling
9 33 (13.47%) Mathematics
10 32 (13.06%) Problem-Solving
11 28 (11.43%) Actionable Insight
12 27 (11.02%) Data Visualisation
13 25 (10.20%) LLM
14 24 (9.80%) Statistics
14 24 (9.80%) Storytelling
15 23 (9.39%) Data Analysis
16 22 (8.98%) Data Modelling
17 21 (8.57%) Generative AI
18 19 (7.76%) Business Strategy
19 18 (7.35%) E-Commerce
Programming Languages
1 110 (44.90%) Python
2 60 (24.49%) SQL
3 28 (11.43%) R
4 4 (1.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 4 (1.63%) T-SQL
5 3 (1.22%) Julia
6 1 (0.41%) C++
6 1 (0.41%) Scala
Qualifications
1 55 (22.45%) Degree
2 37 (15.10%) Security Cleared
3 31 (12.65%) DV Cleared
4 27 (11.02%) PhD
5 12 (4.90%) DBS Check
6 10 (4.08%) ACCA
6 10 (4.08%) CIMA
6 10 (4.08%) SC Cleared
7 8 (3.27%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.22%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.41%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (4.49%) Data Quality
2 3 (1.22%) GDPR
3 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.41%) ISO 13485
3 1 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 4 (1.63%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.22%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.41%) Argo
2 1 (0.41%) Kubeflow
2 1 (0.41%) Terraform
Vendors
1 12 (4.90%) Microsoft
2 11 (4.49%) Salesforce
3 9 (3.67%) Databricks
4 6 (2.45%) ServiceNow
5 2 (0.82%) Civica
5 2 (0.82%) Google
5 2 (0.82%) Northgate
5 2 (0.82%) Orchard
6 1 (0.41%) Facebook
6 1 (0.41%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.41%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.41%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud