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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 82 92
Rank change year-on-year +30 +10 +50
Contract jobs citing Data Science 80 39 36
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.10% 2.12% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.61% 2.31% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 21 29
10th Percentile £402 £425 £463
25th Percentile £469 £453 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% -4.00% +12.36%
75th Percentile £684 £700 £700
90th Percentile £738 £775 £720
Central London median daily rate £575 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -4.17% -4.00% +12.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £22.00 -
Central London median hourly rate - £22.00 -

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 1,735 1,687 2,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.88% 91.78% 89.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 1,030 1,509
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £431 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £781 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -4.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 9 14
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.34 £31.00 £19.18
Median hourly rate £34.25 £38.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.04% +18.46% -7.14%
75th Percentile £46.29 £48.75 £45.52
90th Percentile £55.54 £112.00 £66.70
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -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 22 February 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 (6.25%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.25%) Apache
2 1 (1.25%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.25%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.25%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 34 (42.50%) Azure
2 28 (35.00%) Power Platform
3 24 (30.00%) AWS
4 16 (20.00%) GCP
5 7 (8.75%) Amazon SageMaker
5 7 (8.75%) Snowflake
6 6 (7.50%) Azure Machine Learning
6 6 (7.50%) GitHub
7 4 (5.00%) Azure AI
7 4 (5.00%) Cloud Computing
7 4 (5.00%) GitHub Copilot
8 3 (3.75%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (3.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 3 (3.75%) Copilot Studio
8 3 (3.75%) Google Gemini
8 3 (3.75%) IBM Watson
8 3 (3.75%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (3.75%) Power Automate
8 3 (3.75%) PowerApps
9 2 (2.50%) AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (26.25%) Power BI
2 14 (17.50%) Tableau
3 6 (7.50%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (5.00%) Metadata
4 4 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (3.75%) DB2
5 3 (3.75%) Looker
5 3 (3.75%) Mixpanel
5 3 (3.75%) MongoDB
5 3 (3.75%) NoSQL
6 2 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (2.50%) Big Data
6 2 (2.50%) Snowflake Schema
6 2 (2.50%) SQL Server
7 1 (1.25%) MySQL
7 1 (1.25%) OLAP
7 1 (1.25%) Oracle OLAP
7 1 (1.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 1 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 8 (10.00%) Git
2 2 (2.50%) MLflow
3 1 (1.25%) ERwin
3 1 (1.25%) GitLab
3 1 (1.25%) JIRA
3 1 (1.25%) SonarQube
General
1 29 (36.25%) Social Skills
2 24 (30.00%) Finance
3 20 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (17.50%) Banking
5 12 (15.00%) Public Sector
6 4 (5.00%) Legal
6 4 (5.00%) Marketing
6 4 (5.00%) Retail
7 3 (3.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (3.75%) Investment Banking
7 3 (3.75%) Law
8 2 (2.50%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (1.25%) Aviation
9 1 (1.25%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (1.25%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.25%) Front Office
9 1 (1.25%) Manufacturing
9 1 (1.25%) Military
9 1 (1.25%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 25 (31.25%) Data Scientist
2 14 (17.50%) Data Engineer
3 10 (12.50%) Lead
4 9 (11.25%) Senior
5 7 (8.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 7 (8.75%) Technical Leader
6 6 (7.50%) Developer
7 4 (5.00%) Senior Data Scientist
8 3 (3.75%) Analyst
8 3 (3.75%) Architect
8 3 (3.75%) GCP Data Engineer
8 3 (3.75%) GCP Engineer
8 3 (3.75%) Gen AI Engineer
8 3 (3.75%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 2 (2.50%) Evangelist
9 2 (2.50%) Gen AI Software Engineer
9 2 (2.50%) Marketing Manager
9 2 (2.50%) Operations Manager
9 2 (2.50%) Product Manager
9 2 (2.50%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (20.00%) PyTorch
1 16 (20.00%) scikit-learn
2 15 (18.75%) TensorFlow
3 11 (13.75%) NumPy
3 11 (13.75%) Pandas
4 9 (11.25%) LangChain
5 8 (10.00%) LangGraph
6 5 (6.25%) AngularJS
6 5 (6.25%) React
7 4 (5.00%) Matplotlib
7 4 (5.00%) PySpark
7 4 (5.00%) Seaborn
8 3 (3.75%) Backbone.js
8 3 (3.75%) Bootstrap
8 3 (3.75%) Ember.js
8 3 (3.75%) Hugging Face
8 3 (3.75%) jQuery
8 3 (3.75%) Keras
9 2 (2.50%) Vue
9 2 (2.50%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (15.00%) Algorithms
2 9 (11.25%) AI Agents
3 7 (8.75%) Product Ownership
4 4 (5.00%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.50%) Clustering
5 2 (2.50%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.50%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (2.50%) Hedge funds
5 2 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.50%) Marketing Technology
6 1 (1.25%) Blog
6 1 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 1 (1.25%) LIMS
6 1 (1.25%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.25%) NHS
6 1 (1.25%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.25%) Reference Data
6 1 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.25%) Taxonomies
6 1 (1.25%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 3 (3.75%) Android
1 3 (3.75%) Apple iOS
1 3 (3.75%) Linux
1 3 (3.75%) Windows
2 1 (1.25%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (58.75%) AI
2 40 (50.00%) Machine Learning
3 35 (43.75%) Analytics
4 31 (38.75%) Generative AI
5 24 (30.00%) Visualisation
6 23 (28.75%) Business Intelligence
7 21 (26.25%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (25.00%) Data Pipeline
9 18 (22.50%) Data Visualisation
10 17 (21.25%) LLM
11 15 (18.75%) Agile
11 15 (18.75%) Data Engineering
12 14 (17.50%) Data Modelling
12 14 (17.50%) Software Engineering
13 13 (16.25%) Computer Science
13 13 (16.25%) Decision-Making
13 13 (16.25%) Natural Language Processing
14 12 (15.00%) Actionable Insight
14 12 (15.00%) CI/CD
15 11 (13.75%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 43 (53.75%) Python
2 30 (37.50%) SQL
3 4 (5.00%) Java
3 4 (5.00%) R
4 3 (3.75%) C#
4 3 (3.75%) C++
4 3 (3.75%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.50%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.25%) Bicep
6 1 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.25%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.25%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.25%) Scala
6 1 (1.25%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 18 (22.50%) Security Cleared
2 17 (21.25%) Degree
3 15 (18.75%) SC Cleared
4 4 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (5.00%) PhD
5 3 (3.75%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.25%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.25%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (15.00%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.75%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.50%) WCAG
4 1 (1.25%) Dodd-Frank
4 1 (1.25%) EMIR
System Software
1 1 (1.25%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.50%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 15 (18.75%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.75%) Google
3 6 (7.50%) Databricks
4 4 (5.00%) Foundry
4 4 (5.00%) IBM
5 3 (3.75%) Amplitude
5 3 (3.75%) Cognos
5 3 (3.75%) Sage
6 2 (2.50%) Oracle
7 1 (1.25%) Alteryx
7 1 (1.25%) Guidewire
7 1 (1.25%) SAP
7 1 (1.25%) Workday