Data Science Contracts in the UK excluding London

Data Science
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Data Science skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Science over the 6 months leading up to 21 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 162 241 230
Rank change year-on-year +79 -11 -5
Contract jobs citing Data Science 199 156 229
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 1.54% 0.77% 0.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.70% 0.91% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 124 114 145
10th Percentile £279 £325 £405
25th Percentile £395 £385 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £545
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -9.17% -0.91%
75th Percentile £641 £600 £638
90th Percentile £721 £748 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £575
% change year-on-year -2.78% -6.09% -2.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 9 18
10th Percentile £19.96 £15.69 £18.93
25th Percentile £22.55 £20.47 £19.00
Median hourly rate £26.47 £22.50 £22.16
Median % change year-on-year +17.62% +1.53% -47.24%
75th Percentile £41.25 £33.25 £48.13
90th Percentile £82.25 £61.60 £56.73
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £30.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -16.39% -12.86% -16.67%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 11,714 17,075 20,684
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 90.67% 84.25% 89.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,292 10,208 14,243
10th Percentile £234 £250 £258
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £651 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 2,062 1,260
10th Percentile £14.10 £12.34 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.08 £15.31 £15.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.82% +8.57% +75.00%
75th Percentile £63.00 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £73.71
UK median hourly rate £27.64 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -24.27% +1.39% +40.19%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Data Science as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Data Science in the UK excluding London

Data Science
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Data Science in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Data Science in the UK excluding London

Data Science
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Science in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Science in the UK excluding London

Data Science
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Data Science in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Data Science in the UK excluding London

Data Science
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Science in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Science in the UK excluding London

Data Science
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Science within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 21 May 2025. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Scotland +37 42 £471 -3.33% 88
North of England +19 38 £475 -3.06% 324
East of England +37 35 £600 +11.63% 94
South East +35 30 £478 +0.53% 515
South West +46 24 £659 +25.48% 113
North West +4 20 £455 -6.67% 189
Wales +8 15 £263 -36.05% 20
Midlands +3 14 £436 -10.62% 114
Yorkshire +13 13 £563 +7.14% 103
West Midlands -2 8 £406 -21.69% 64
North East +1 5 £379 - 36
East Midlands +8 4 £459 +22.40% 43
Northern Ireland - 2 £500 - 24
Data Science
UK

Data Science
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 23 (11.56%) Apache Spark
2 8 (4.02%) Apache
2 8 (4.02%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (3.02%) Jupyter
4 2 (1.01%) IBM Domino
4 2 (1.01%) OpenStack
4 2 (1.01%) SAS
4 2 (1.01%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.50%) Confluence
Applications
1 11 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (3.02%) MS Visio
3 4 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.50%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (1.01%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 63 (31.66%) Azure
2 52 (26.13%) AWS
3 30 (15.08%) GCP
4 21 (10.55%) Cloud Computing
5 20 (10.05%) Power Platform
6 13 (6.53%) Azure Machine Learning
7 11 (5.53%) Snowflake
8 9 (4.52%) Serverless
9 7 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
10 6 (3.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 6 (3.02%) GitHub
10 6 (3.02%) PaaS
11 5 (2.51%) Amazon S3
12 4 (2.01%) Google Compute Engine
13 3 (1.51%) Amazon EMR
13 3 (1.51%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (1.51%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (1.51%) dbt
13 3 (1.51%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.01%) DNS
2 2 (1.01%) iSCSI
2 2 (1.01%) LAN
2 2 (1.01%) SAN
2 2 (1.01%) WAN
3 1 (0.50%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (16.58%) Tableau
2 31 (15.58%) Big Data
3 25 (12.56%) Hadoop
4 22 (11.06%) Data Warehouse
5 21 (10.55%) Metadata
6 20 (10.05%) Power BI
7 14 (7.04%) KDB
7 14 (7.04%) Kdb+
8 10 (5.03%) BigQuery
9 9 (4.52%) Data Lake
10 8 (4.02%) Data Mining
11 7 (3.52%) Relational Database
12 6 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (2.51%) Metadata Repository
14 4 (2.01%) NoSQL
14 4 (2.01%) SQL Server
15 3 (1.51%) Looker
16 2 (1.01%) Delta Lake
16 2 (1.01%) Electronic Patient Records
16 2 (1.01%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 8 (4.02%) Git
2 7 (3.52%) JIRA
3 5 (2.51%) GitLab
4 4 (2.01%) ERwin
4 4 (2.01%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.01%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (1.51%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.50%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.50%) CMake
6 1 (0.50%) MLflow
6 1 (0.50%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.50%) Visual Studio
General
1 79 (39.70%) Social Skills
2 50 (25.13%) Analytical Skills
3 32 (16.08%) Banking
4 27 (13.57%) Investment Banking
5 26 (13.07%) Finance
6 18 (9.05%) Public Sector
7 9 (4.52%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (3.02%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.01%) Advertising
10 2 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.01%) Law
10 2 (1.01%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.01%) Marketing
10 2 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (1.01%) Retail
10 2 (1.01%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.50%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.50%) Military
11 1 (0.50%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 49 (24.62%) Developer
2 38 (19.10%) Data Scientist
3 35 (17.59%) Senior
4 22 (11.06%) Python Developer
4 22 (11.06%) Senior Developer
5 18 (9.05%) Data Engineer
6 15 (7.54%) Analyst
6 15 (7.54%) Architect
7 14 (7.04%) C++ Developer
7 14 (7.04%) Data Science Developer
7 14 (7.04%) Python Engineer
8 13 (6.53%) Investment Banking C++ Developer
8 13 (6.53%) Linux Developer
8 13 (6.53%) Senior C++ Developer
8 13 (6.53%) Senior Python Developer
9 12 (6.03%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
9 12 (6.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 10 (5.03%) Data Analyst
10 10 (5.03%) JavaScript Engineer
11 7 (3.52%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (13.07%) NumPy
1 26 (13.07%) Pandas
2 24 (12.06%) TensorFlow
3 23 (11.56%) PyTorch
4 22 (11.06%) scikit-learn
5 17 (8.54%) Matplotlib
6 16 (8.04%) Seaborn
7 11 (5.53%) PySpark
8 9 (4.52%) Kafka
9 4 (2.01%) AngularJS
9 4 (2.01%) React
10 3 (1.51%) Django
10 3 (1.51%) LangChain
11 2 (1.01%) .NET
11 2 (1.01%) CSS
11 2 (1.01%) HTML
11 2 (1.01%) Metaflow
11 2 (1.01%) Node.js
11 2 (1.01%) Regular Expression
11 2 (1.01%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 36 (18.09%) Algorithms
2 21 (10.55%) Management Information System
3 20 (10.05%) Enterprise Software
4 13 (6.53%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (3.52%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (3.02%) Cloud Native
7 5 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (2.51%) Reference Data
8 4 (2.01%) Data Centre
8 4 (2.01%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.51%) Distributed Computing
9 3 (1.51%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.01%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.01%) FMCG
10 2 (1.01%) Life Science
10 2 (1.01%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (1.01%) NHS
10 2 (1.01%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.01%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 29 (14.57%) Linux
2 26 (13.07%) Windows
3 2 (1.01%) CentOS
3 2 (1.01%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.01%) VMS
4 1 (0.50%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (45.23%) Machine Learning
2 81 (40.70%) Artificial Intelligence
3 69 (34.67%) Analytics
4 54 (27.14%) Visualisation
5 52 (26.13%) Problem-Solving
6 49 (24.62%) Decision-Making
7 41 (20.60%) Data Engineering
8 40 (20.10%) Data Analysis
9 36 (18.09%) Data Modelling
10 35 (17.59%) Computer Science
10 35 (17.59%) Data Analytics
11 33 (16.58%) Data Pipeline
12 32 (16.08%) Business Intelligence
13 29 (14.57%) Containerisation
14 28 (14.07%) LLM
15 27 (13.57%) Data Visualisation
15 27 (13.57%) Generative AI
16 26 (13.07%) ETL
17 25 (12.56%) Data Security
18 24 (12.06%) Statistical Modelling
Programming Languages
1 130 (65.33%) Python
2 63 (31.66%) SQL
3 34 (17.09%) R
4 22 (11.06%) Java
5 17 (8.54%) C++
5 17 (8.54%) JavaScript
6 14 (7.04%) TypeScript
7 8 (4.02%) Scala
8 4 (2.01%) Perl
8 4 (2.01%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.51%) T-SQL
10 2 (1.01%) MATLAB
10 2 (1.01%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 54 (27.14%) Degree
2 25 (12.56%) Security Cleared
3 18 (9.05%) Master's Degree
4 14 (7.04%) PhD
4 14 (7.04%) SC Cleared
5 12 (6.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (4.02%) AWS Certification
7 7 (3.52%) Azure Certification
7 7 (3.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.01%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (1.01%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (19.60%) Data Quality
2 9 (4.52%) QA
3 4 (2.01%) GDPR
3 4 (2.01%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.50%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 26 (13.07%) Docker
2 4 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.01%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (13.57%) Kubernetes
2 18 (9.05%) Terraform
3 5 (2.51%) Ansible
4 2 (1.01%) Progress Chef
4 2 (1.01%) Puppet
4 2 (1.01%) Salt
Vendors
1 31 (15.58%) Microsoft
2 30 (15.08%) Databricks
3 23 (11.56%) Google
4 9 (4.52%) SAP
5 7 (3.52%) ServiceNow
6 4 (2.01%) Cloudera
7 3 (1.51%) OpenAI
7 3 (1.51%) Oracle
7 3 (1.51%) Virgin Media
8 2 (1.01%) Alteryx
8 2 (1.01%) VMware
9 1 (0.50%) Brio
9 1 (0.50%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.50%) Cognos
9 1 (0.50%) Criteo
9 1 (0.50%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.50%) Fortinet
9 1 (0.50%) Infoblox
9 1 (0.50%) Teradata
9 1 (0.50%) Workday