Data Scientist Contracts in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
UK > UK excluding London

The median Data Scientist daily rate in the UK excluding London is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 292 368 402
Rank change year-on-year +76 +34 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Scientist 44 31 60
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.34% 0.15% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.37% 0.16% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 20 35
10th Percentile £358 £398 £146
25th Percentile £419 £444 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% - -3.23%
75th Percentile £638 £575 £625
90th Percentile £676 £613 £713
UK median daily rate £520 £546 £533
% change year-on-year -4.72% +2.49% -7.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 11
10th Percentile £19.15 £15.32 -
25th Percentile £20.12 £15.51 £19.00
Median hourly rate £20.24 £15.81 £19.49
Median % change year-on-year +27.99% -18.88% -2.11%
75th Percentile £22.00 £18.14 £52.74
90th Percentile £35.80 £19.54 £56.40
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £31.75 £19.50
% change year-on-year -30.71% +62.86% -48.01%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 11,767 19,240 22,667
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 92.63% 94.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,552 11,748 15,893
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £595
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 829 2,243 1,165
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.50 £13.45
25th Percentile £17.61 £15.75 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%
75th Percentile £64.50 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Data Scientist in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate trend for Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Scientist in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Hourly rate trend for Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Scientist in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Data Scientist
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 Scientist within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 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
South East +57 14 £500 -8.88% 74
North of England +22 11 £465 -16.06% 55
North West +24 9 £455 -12.50% 43
South West +51 8 £640 +19.07% 17
Wales 0 6 £409 +3.35% 4
Midlands +23 3 £650 +10.17% 15
West Midlands +14 2 £650 +10.17% 8
Scotland +12 2 £469 -3.85% 12
Yorkshire +4 1 £500 -10.71% 9
North East 0 1 £525 - 3
East Midlands - 1 - - 4
Data Scientist
UK

Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Data Scientist contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Data Scientist in the job title.

1 44 (100.00%) Data Science
2 37 (84.09%) Python
3 29 (65.91%) Machine Learning
4 18 (40.91%) SQL
4 18 (40.91%) Azure
5 14 (31.82%) Artificial Intelligence
6 13 (29.55%) Data Analysis
7 12 (27.27%) Security Cleared
7 12 (27.27%) Analytics
8 10 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (22.73%) Algorithms
8 10 (22.73%) Visualisation
9 9 (20.45%) Predictive Modelling
9 9 (20.45%) Databricks
9 9 (20.45%) Decision-Making
9 9 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (18.18%) Data Engineering
10 8 (18.18%) Big Data
10 8 (18.18%) AWS
10 8 (18.18%) Data Visualisation
10 8 (18.18%) Mathematics
10 8 (18.18%) Business Intelligence
11 7 (15.91%) Data Modelling
11 7 (15.91%) Natural Language Processing
11 7 (15.91%) R
11 7 (15.91%) Power BI
11 7 (15.91%) Azure Machine Learning
11 7 (15.91%) Actionable Insight
11 7 (15.91%) Power Platform
12 6 (13.64%) Social Skills

Data Scientist Skill Set
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 4 (9.09%) Apache Spark
2 2 (4.55%) Apache
3 1 (2.27%) Jupyter
3 1 (2.27%) SAS
3 1 (2.27%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 18 (40.91%) Azure
2 8 (18.18%) AWS
3 7 (15.91%) Azure Machine Learning
3 7 (15.91%) Power Platform
4 3 (6.82%) GCP
5 2 (4.55%) Snowflake
6 1 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.27%) Azure AI
6 1 (2.27%) Azure AKS
6 1 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
6 1 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (2.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 1 (2.27%) Entra ID
6 1 (2.27%) PowerApps
6 1 (2.27%) Prefect
6 1 (2.27%) SaaS
6 1 (2.27%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (18.18%) Big Data
2 7 (15.91%) Power BI
3 6 (13.64%) Hadoop
4 5 (11.36%) Tableau
5 4 (9.09%) Data Mining
6 2 (4.55%) Data Lake
7 1 (2.27%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 5 (11.36%) Git
2 1 (2.27%) JIRA
2 1 (2.27%) PyCharm
2 1 (2.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 10 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (13.64%) Social Skills
3 5 (11.36%) Public Sector
4 4 (9.09%) Finance
5 2 (4.55%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.27%) Aerospace
6 1 (2.27%) Banking
6 1 (2.27%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (2.27%) Retail Banking
6 1 (2.27%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (13.64%) Pandas
2 5 (11.36%) NumPy
2 5 (11.36%) PySpark
2 5 (11.36%) scikit-learn
3 4 (9.09%) TensorFlow
4 3 (6.82%) LangChain
4 3 (6.82%) PyTorch
5 2 (4.55%) Django
5 2 (4.55%) Regular Expression
5 2 (4.55%) XGBoost
6 1 (2.27%) CSS
6 1 (2.27%) HTML
6 1 (2.27%) Kafka
6 1 (2.27%) Matplotlib
6 1 (2.27%) Metaflow
6 1 (2.27%) Prophet
Miscellaneous
1 10 (22.73%) Algorithms
2 3 (6.82%) Distributed Computing
3 2 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (4.55%) FMCG
3 2 (4.55%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (4.55%) Onboarding
4 1 (2.27%) CUDA
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (100.00%) Data Science
2 29 (65.91%) Machine Learning
3 14 (31.82%) Artificial Intelligence
4 13 (29.55%) Data Analysis
5 12 (27.27%) Analytics
6 10 (22.73%) Visualisation
7 9 (20.45%) Decision-Making
7 9 (20.45%) Predictive Modelling
7 9 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (18.18%) Business Intelligence
8 8 (18.18%) Data Engineering
8 8 (18.18%) Data Visualisation
8 8 (18.18%) Mathematics
9 7 (15.91%) Actionable Insight
9 7 (15.91%) Data Modelling
9 7 (15.91%) Natural Language Processing
10 6 (13.64%) Data Pipeline
10 6 (13.64%) LLM
10 6 (13.64%) Statistical Analysis
11 5 (11.36%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 37 (84.09%) Python
2 18 (40.91%) SQL
3 7 (15.91%) R
4 3 (6.82%) Java
Qualifications
1 12 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 6 (13.64%) Degree
2 6 (13.64%) SC Cleared
3 4 (9.09%) DV Cleared
4 2 (4.55%) Numerate Degree
5 1 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (9.09%) Data Quality
2 2 (4.55%) Accessibility
Systems Management
1 1 (2.27%) Ansible
1 1 (2.27%) Kubernetes
1 1 (2.27%) Terraform
Vendors
1 9 (20.45%) Databricks
2 5 (11.36%) Microsoft
3 3 (6.82%) ServiceNow
3 3 (6.82%) Virgin Media
4 2 (4.55%) Google
5 1 (2.27%) Alteryx
5 1 (2.27%) Fortinet
5 1 (2.27%) Foundry
5 1 (2.27%) Infoblox
5 1 (2.27%) OpenAI
5 1 (2.27%) Oracle
5 1 (2.27%) SAP