Data Science Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Data Science
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Data Science skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 69 86
Rank change year-on-year +6 +17 +34
Contract jobs citing Data Science 78 47 41
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.34% 2.81% 1.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.93% 3.00% 2.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 34 28
10th Percentile £410 £440 £451
25th Percentile £469 £516 £504
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £613 £684 £681
90th Percentile £770 £775 £738
Central London median daily rate £575 £550 £625
% change year-on-year +4.55% -12.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
Median hourly rate £52.49 £22.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +138.59% - -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £22.00 -
% change year-on-year +138.59% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

Data Science falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,983 1,566 1,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 85.03% 93.49% 90.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,357 987 1,374
10th Percentile £356 £355 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 15 12
10th Percentile £17.84 £18.70 £19.95
25th Percentile £18.75 £22.88 £20.22
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.15 £25.63
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% +9.85% -26.79%
75th Percentile £52.49 £39.21 £40.00
90th Percentile £62.89 £57.75 £41.65
Central London median hourly rate £26.56 £28.15 £27.81
% change year-on-year -5.67% +1.22% -20.54%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Science relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Data Science job vacancy trend in the City of London

Data Science
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Science.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Science

Data Science
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Science in the City of London over the 6 months to 29 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Science in the City of London

Data Science
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Science.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Data Science

Data Science
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 (6.41%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.56%) Apache
3 1 (1.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.28%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (1.28%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 24 (30.77%) Azure
2 20 (25.64%) AWS
3 18 (23.08%) Power Platform
4 15 (19.23%) GCP
5 8 (10.26%) Snowflake
6 6 (7.69%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (6.41%) GitHub
8 4 (5.13%) Amazon S3
8 4 (5.13%) GitHub Copilot
9 3 (3.85%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (3.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (3.85%) Prefect
10 2 (2.56%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (2.56%) Azure Cognitive Search
10 2 (2.56%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (2.56%) dbt
10 2 (2.56%) Fivetran
10 2 (2.56%) IBM Watson
11 1 (1.28%) Amazon Bedrock
11 1 (1.28%) Google Gemini
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (25.64%) Tableau
2 16 (20.51%) Power BI
3 8 (10.26%) BigQuery
4 6 (7.69%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (6.41%) NoSQL
6 4 (5.13%) Looker
6 4 (5.13%) Metadata
6 4 (5.13%) Mixpanel
6 4 (5.13%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (5.13%) Snowflake Schema
7 3 (3.85%) DB2
7 3 (3.85%) MongoDB
7 3 (3.85%) SQL Server
8 2 (2.56%) Big Data
8 2 (2.56%) Data Lake
8 2 (2.56%) Relational Database
8 2 (2.56%) Star Schema
9 1 (1.28%) Data Mining
9 1 (1.28%) MySQL
9 1 (1.28%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 4 (5.13%) Git
2 1 (1.28%) ERwin
2 1 (1.28%) GitLab
2 1 (1.28%) MLflow
2 1 (1.28%) SonarQube
General
1 24 (30.77%) Finance
2 18 (23.08%) Social Skills
3 13 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (11.54%) Banking
5 6 (7.69%) Public Sector
6 5 (6.41%) Marketing
7 3 (3.85%) Investment Banking
7 3 (3.85%) Legal
8 2 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.56%) Retail
9 1 (1.28%) Aviation
9 1 (1.28%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (1.28%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.28%) Military
9 1 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 21 (26.92%) Data Engineer
2 19 (24.36%) Data Scientist
3 10 (12.82%) GCP Data Engineer
3 10 (12.82%) GCP Engineer
4 7 (8.97%) Lead
5 5 (6.41%) Analyst
5 5 (6.41%) Architect
5 5 (6.41%) Technical Leader
6 4 (5.13%) Snowflake Data Engineer
6 4 (5.13%) Snowflake Engineer
6 4 (5.13%) Software Engineer
7 3 (3.85%) Data Analyst
7 3 (3.85%) Product Manager
8 2 (2.56%) Business Data Analyst
8 2 (2.56%) Data Architect
8 2 (2.56%) Head of Business Intelligence
8 2 (2.56%) Marketing Manager
8 2 (2.56%) Operations Manager
8 2 (2.56%) Python Software Engineer
8 2 (2.56%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (14.10%) PyTorch
2 9 (11.54%) TensorFlow
3 7 (8.97%) scikit-learn
4 6 (7.69%) LangChain
4 6 (7.69%) PySpark
5 5 (6.41%) LangGraph
6 4 (5.13%) Hugging Face
6 4 (5.13%) Pandas
7 3 (3.85%) AngularJS
7 3 (3.85%) Backbone.js
7 3 (3.85%) Bootstrap
7 3 (3.85%) Ember.js
7 3 (3.85%) jQuery
7 3 (3.85%) Keras
7 3 (3.85%) NumPy
7 3 (3.85%) React
8 2 (2.56%) Kafka
8 2 (2.56%) Matplotlib
8 2 (2.56%) Seaborn
8 2 (2.56%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.97%) AI Agents
1 7 (8.97%) Product Ownership
2 6 (7.69%) Algorithms
3 5 (6.41%) Cloud Native
4 3 (3.85%) Clustering
4 3 (3.85%) Marketing Technology
5 2 (2.56%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.28%) Blog
6 1 (1.28%) LIMS
6 1 (1.28%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.28%) Reference Data
6 1 (1.28%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.85%) Android
1 3 (3.85%) Apple iOS
1 3 (3.85%) Linux
1 3 (3.85%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (61.54%) Analytics
2 46 (58.97%) AI
3 35 (44.87%) Machine Learning
4 29 (37.18%) Generative AI
5 21 (26.92%) Data Pipeline
6 19 (24.36%) LLM
7 18 (23.08%) Business Intelligence
8 17 (21.79%) Data Engineering
9 16 (20.51%) CI/CD
10 14 (17.95%) Data Analytics
10 14 (17.95%) Data Modelling
10 14 (17.95%) Visualisation
11 13 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
12 12 (15.38%) Decision-Making
12 12 (15.38%) Validation
13 11 (14.10%) Software Engineering
14 10 (12.82%) Data Governance
14 10 (12.82%) MLOps
14 10 (12.82%) Use Case
15 9 (11.54%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 39 (50.00%) Python
2 31 (39.74%) SQL
3 7 (8.97%) R
4 6 (7.69%) Java
5 3 (3.85%) C#
6 2 (2.56%) Bicep
6 2 (2.56%) C++
6 2 (2.56%) Scala
6 2 (2.56%) T-SQL
7 1 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (1.28%) JavaScript
7 1 (1.28%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (16.67%) Security Cleared
2 12 (15.38%) SC Cleared
3 7 (8.97%) Degree
4 3 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (3.85%) PhD
5 2 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.56%) SnowPro
6 1 (1.28%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.28%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.28%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (19.23%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.28%) QA
System Software
1 6 (7.69%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (6.41%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.56%) Terraform
3 1 (1.28%) Istio
3 1 (1.28%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (11.54%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.97%) Google
3 4 (5.13%) Amplitude
3 4 (5.13%) Databricks
4 3 (3.85%) IBM
5 2 (2.56%) Cognos
5 2 (2.56%) Informatica
5 2 (2.56%) OpenAI
5 2 (2.56%) Sage
6 1 (1.28%) Apple
6 1 (1.28%) Dynatrace
6 1 (1.28%) Guidewire
6 1 (1.28%) Oracle