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 4 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 68 108
Rank change year-on-year +9 +40 +16
Contract jobs citing Data Science 69 48 30
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.77% 2.44% 1.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.18% 2.65% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 29 22
10th Percentile £400 £450 £463
25th Percentile £469 £513 £514
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £625 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% - +8.70%
75th Percentile £698 £700 £702
90th Percentile £738 £725 £715
Central London median daily rate £575 £606 £625
% change year-on-year -5.15% -3.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.25 - -
Median hourly rate £27.50 £22.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - -
75th Percentile £28.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 £22.00 -
% change year-on-year +25.00% - -

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 1,650 1,808 2,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.21% 92.01% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,158 1,100 1,558
10th Percentile £348 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.39% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £763 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -6.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 13 10
10th Percentile £20.18 £15.60 £17.00
25th Percentile £22.18 £22.00 £17.48
Median hourly rate £31.00 £42.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -27.06% +61.90% -30.46%
75th Percentile £42.47 £112.00 £44.56
90th Percentile £46.05 £132.40 £74.13
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.66
% change year-on-year -25.40% +26.56% -20.99%

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 4 January 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 4 (5.80%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.45%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.45%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 29 (42.03%) Azure
2 19 (27.54%) Power Platform
3 17 (24.64%) AWS
4 9 (13.04%) GCP
5 7 (10.14%) Snowflake
6 6 (8.70%) Amazon SageMaker
6 6 (8.70%) Azure Machine Learning
7 4 (5.80%) Azure AI
7 4 (5.80%) GitHub
8 3 (4.35%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 3 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
8 3 (4.35%) Copilot Studio
8 3 (4.35%) Google Gemini
8 3 (4.35%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (4.35%) Power Automate
8 3 (4.35%) PowerApps
9 2 (2.90%) AWS Elastic Beanstalk
9 2 (2.90%) IBM Watson
9 2 (2.90%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.45%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (20.29%) Power BI
2 9 (13.04%) Tableau
3 3 (4.35%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (2.90%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (2.90%) Big Data
4 2 (2.90%) Geospatial Data
4 2 (2.90%) Metadata
4 2 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (2.90%) Spatial Data
5 1 (1.45%) BigQuery
5 1 (1.45%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.45%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.45%) KDB
5 1 (1.45%) Kdb+
5 1 (1.45%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.45%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.45%) Snowflake Schema
5 1 (1.45%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 7 (10.14%) Git
2 2 (2.90%) MLflow
3 1 (1.45%) GitLab
3 1 (1.45%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.45%) JIRA
3 1 (1.45%) SonarQube
General
1 24 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 17 (24.64%) Finance
3 16 (23.19%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (20.29%) Public Sector
5 12 (17.39%) Banking
6 3 (4.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (4.35%) Investment Banking
6 3 (4.35%) Law
6 3 (4.35%) Legal
6 3 (4.35%) Marketing
7 2 (2.90%) Pharmaceutical
7 2 (2.90%) Retail
8 1 (1.45%) Front Office
8 1 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (1.45%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 20 (28.99%) Data Scientist
2 10 (14.49%) Data Engineer
3 9 (13.04%) Senior
4 8 (11.59%) Lead
5 7 (10.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 7 (10.14%) Developer
6 5 (7.25%) Technical Leader
7 4 (5.80%) Senior Data Scientist
8 3 (4.35%) Gen AI Engineer
8 3 (4.35%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 3 (4.35%) Software Engineer
9 2 (2.90%) Architect
9 2 (2.90%) Azure Data Engineer
9 2 (2.90%) Azure Engineer
9 2 (2.90%) Evangelist
9 2 (2.90%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
9 2 (2.90%) Gen AI Software Engineer
9 2 (2.90%) Python Engineer
10 1 (1.45%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 1 (1.45%) KDB Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (18.84%) scikit-learn
2 11 (15.94%) Pandas
3 10 (14.49%) NumPy
3 10 (14.49%) PyTorch
4 9 (13.04%) TensorFlow
5 7 (10.14%) LangChain
6 6 (8.70%) LangGraph
7 4 (5.80%) PySpark
8 3 (4.35%) Matplotlib
8 3 (4.35%) Seaborn
9 2 (2.90%) AngularJS
9 2 (2.90%) D3.js
9 2 (2.90%) FastAPI
9 2 (2.90%) Kafka
9 2 (2.90%) React
9 2 (2.90%) SQLAlchemy
9 2 (2.90%) Vue
10 1 (1.45%) Altair
10 1 (1.45%) Faiss
10 1 (1.45%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 10 (14.49%) Algorithms
2 8 (11.59%) AI Agents
3 6 (8.70%) Product Ownership
4 4 (5.80%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.90%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (2.90%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (2.90%) Hedge funds
5 2 (2.90%) Marketing Technology
5 2 (2.90%) Replication
6 1 (1.45%) Blog
6 1 (1.45%) Clustering
6 1 (1.45%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.45%) Fixed Income
6 1 (1.45%) NHS
6 1 (1.45%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.45%) Taxonomies
6 1 (1.45%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.90%) Linux
2 1 (1.45%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (60.87%) AI
2 35 (50.72%) Machine Learning
3 30 (43.48%) Generative AI
4 25 (36.23%) Analytics
5 21 (30.43%) Visualisation
6 19 (27.54%) Problem-Solving
7 16 (23.19%) Agile
7 16 (23.19%) Data Pipeline
8 14 (20.29%) Business Intelligence
8 14 (20.29%) CI/CD
8 14 (20.29%) LLM
8 14 (20.29%) Software Engineering
9 13 (18.84%) Data Visualisation
10 11 (15.94%) Data Engineering
11 10 (14.49%) Actionable Insight
11 10 (14.49%) Computer Science
11 10 (14.49%) ETL
12 9 (13.04%) Data Governance
12 9 (13.04%) Data Modelling
12 9 (13.04%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 38 (55.07%) Python
2 21 (30.43%) SQL
3 4 (5.80%) C++
3 4 (5.80%) JavaScript
4 3 (4.35%) C#
4 3 (4.35%) Java
5 2 (2.90%) Go
5 2 (2.90%) R
6 1 (1.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.45%) F#
6 1 (1.45%) Fortran
6 1 (1.45%) MATLAB
6 1 (1.45%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.45%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.45%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.45%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 19 (27.54%) Security Cleared
2 15 (21.74%) SC Cleared
3 13 (18.84%) Degree
4 4 (5.80%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (5.80%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.45%) CISSP
5 1 (1.45%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.45%) MBA
5 1 (1.45%) PhD
5 1 (1.45%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (10.14%) Data Quality
2 3 (4.35%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.90%) WCAG
4 1 (1.45%) Dodd-Frank
4 1 (1.45%) EMIR
System Software
1 3 (4.35%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (4.35%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.90%) Argo
3 1 (1.45%) ITRS Geneos
3 1 (1.45%) Kibana
3 1 (1.45%) logstash
3 1 (1.45%) Progress Chef
3 1 (1.45%) Terraform
Vendors
1 12 (17.39%) Microsoft
2 8 (11.59%) Databricks
3 5 (7.25%) Foundry
3 5 (7.25%) Google
4 2 (2.90%) Cognos
4 2 (2.90%) IBM
4 2 (2.90%) Sage
5 1 (1.45%) Alteryx
5 1 (1.45%) Bloomberg
5 1 (1.45%) Cloudera
5 1 (1.45%) Guidewire
5 1 (1.45%) Oracle
5 1 (1.45%) Palantir
5 1 (1.45%) SAP
5 1 (1.45%) Solace
5 1 (1.45%) Workday