Data Science Contract Job Trends

Data Science
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Science skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 128 115 187
Rank change year-on-year -13 +72 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Science 819 743 617
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 2.17% 1.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.53% 2.47% 1.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 545 483 423
10th Percentile £372 £356 £376
25th Percentile £420 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £738 £775 £751
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £575
% change year-on-year - -13.04% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 27 9
10th Percentile £20.50 £20.12 £16.70
25th Percentile £24.62 £21.63 £25.38
Median hourly rate £31.31 £25.43 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.10% -16.62% +17.31%
75th Percentile £42.65 £27.57 £47.50
90th Percentile £64.04 £47.75 £48.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.06 £25.40 £19.00
% change year-on-year +18.35% +33.66% -14.26%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,337 30,122 39,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.38% 88.11% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,351 18,405 26,081
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,080 985 1,517
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%
75th Percentile £49.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Science job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Science
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science

Data Science
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science

Data Science
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 18 December 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
England -6 723 £525 -8.70% 1,644
London -2 466 £550 -8.33% 294
UK excluding London -23 249 £500 - 1,593
Work from Home -12 248 £550 +10.00% 684
North of England -37 72 £475 -1.14% 349
North West -2 48 £465 +6.29% 171
Midlands -22 44 £494 -1.20% 281
South East -8 43 £463 +15.63% 452
East of England -3 35 £625 +11.11% 210
South West -22 26 £538 -14.00% 191
Scotland +7 24 £449 -4.83% 75
East Midlands -2 24 £433 +1.76% 106
Yorkshire -33 22 £525 -25.00% 145
West Midlands -29 20 £508 -15.42% 159
Wales -5 7 £550 +158.67% 48
North East -16 2 £425 -12.37% 35
Northern Ireland - 2 £650 - 17

Data Science
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 75 (9.16%) Apache Airflow
2 64 (7.81%) Apache Spark
3 34 (4.15%) Apache
4 22 (2.69%) Jupyter
5 11 (1.34%) SAS
6 8 (0.98%) Apache Pig
6 8 (0.98%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.85%) Confluence
8 3 (0.37%) Luigi
9 2 (0.24%) IIS
10 1 (0.12%) Cloud Foundry
10 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 23 (2.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (2.69%) Chatbot
3 14 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.37%) Adobe Premiere
5 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.37%) Quicktime
6 2 (0.24%) Trello
7 1 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.12%) Blender
7 1 (0.12%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.12%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 6 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.24%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.12%) Actimize
3 1 (0.12%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 305 (37.24%) Azure
2 264 (32.23%) AWS
3 149 (18.19%) GCP
4 138 (16.85%) Power Platform
5 59 (7.20%) Azure Machine Learning
6 55 (6.72%) GitHub
7 54 (6.59%) Serverless
8 49 (5.98%) Azure DevOps
8 49 (5.98%) Snowflake
9 45 (5.49%) Amazon SageMaker
10 44 (5.37%) Azure Data Factory
11 43 (5.25%) dbt
12 37 (4.52%) Amazon S3
13 36 (4.40%) AWS Lambda
14 32 (3.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 29 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (3.30%) Azure AI
16 27 (3.30%) Azure AKS
16 27 (3.30%) Vertex AI
17 20 (2.44%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.98%) Network Security
2 4 (0.49%) Internet
2 4 (0.49%) TCP/IP
3 3 (0.37%) Firewall
4 2 (0.24%) DNS
4 2 (0.24%) tcpdump
4 2 (0.24%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.12%) HTTP
5 1 (0.12%) SSL
5 1 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (15.63%) Power BI
2 93 (11.36%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (8.18%) Tableau
4 58 (7.08%) Big Data
5 52 (6.35%) Data Lake
6 39 (4.76%) NoSQL
7 36 (4.40%) BigQuery
8 33 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
9 29 (3.54%) Hadoop
9 29 (3.54%) Metadata
10 28 (3.42%) Relational Database
11 24 (2.93%) Delta Lake
12 20 (2.44%) Amazon Redshift
13 16 (1.95%) Snowflake Schema
14 15 (1.83%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (1.83%) Apache Hive
14 15 (1.83%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
15 13 (1.59%) SQL Server
16 12 (1.47%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 69 (8.42%) Git
2 43 (5.25%) MLflow
3 32 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 23 (2.81%) GitLab
5 17 (2.08%) JIRA
6 8 (0.98%) JMeter
7 7 (0.85%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.73%) Postman
8 6 (0.73%) PyCharm
9 5 (0.61%) Selenium
10 4 (0.49%) Gatling
10 4 (0.49%) JUnit
10 4 (0.49%) Mockito
10 4 (0.49%) RStudio
10 4 (0.49%) Snyk
11 2 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.24%) Maven
11 2 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle APEX
12 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 278 (33.94%) Social Skills
2 178 (21.73%) Analytical Skills
3 175 (21.37%) Finance
4 86 (10.50%) Public Sector
5 54 (6.59%) Banking
6 41 (5.01%) Marketing
7 28 (3.42%) Retail
8 27 (3.30%) Pharmaceutical
9 20 (2.44%) Manufacturing
10 19 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (2.20%) Legal
12 14 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 14 (1.71%) Investment Banking
13 13 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
13 13 (1.59%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.22%) Front Office
15 9 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.85%) Military
16 7 (0.85%) Publishing
17 6 (0.73%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 225 (27.47%) Data Scientist
2 149 (18.19%) Data Engineer
3 101 (12.33%) Senior
4 80 (9.77%) Developer
5 69 (8.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 56 (6.84%) Architect
7 46 (5.62%) Lead
8 39 (4.76%) Python Engineer
9 38 (4.64%) Analyst
10 30 (3.66%) Senior Data Scientist
11 27 (3.30%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 23 (2.81%) Product Manager
12 23 (2.81%) Senior Data Engineer
13 21 (2.56%) Azure Engineer
14 20 (2.44%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 20 (2.44%) Data Analyst
15 18 (2.20%) AWS Engineer
16 17 (2.08%) Senior Manager
16 17 (2.08%) Software Engineer
17 15 (1.83%) Python Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (12.45%) scikit-learn
2 101 (12.33%) PyTorch
3 99 (12.09%) TensorFlow
4 93 (11.36%) Pandas
5 63 (7.69%) NumPy
6 52 (6.35%) Kafka
7 51 (6.23%) PySpark
8 42 (5.13%) LangChain
9 33 (4.03%) REST
10 31 (3.79%) React
11 27 (3.30%) FastAPI
12 26 (3.17%) Hugging Face
13 24 (2.93%) AngularJS
14 23 (2.81%) LangGraph
15 21 (2.56%) .NET
16 18 (2.20%) Matplotlib
16 18 (2.20%) RESTful
17 17 (2.08%) Node.js
18 14 (1.71%) Semantic Kernel
18 14 (1.71%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 103 (12.58%) Algorithms
2 57 (6.96%) Cloud Native
3 32 (3.91%) AI Agents
4 29 (3.54%) Product Ownership
5 22 (2.69%) Data Protection Act
6 18 (2.20%) Distributed Computing
7 17 (2.08%) Data Structures
8 16 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
8 16 (1.95%) Management Information System
8 16 (1.95%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
10 11 (1.34%) Clustering
10 11 (1.34%) Life Science
11 10 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.10%) Fixed Income
12 9 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
13 8 (0.98%) Credit Risk
13 8 (0.98%) Taxonomies
14 7 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
14 7 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 21 (2.56%) Linux
2 5 (0.61%) Unix
2 5 (0.61%) Windows
3 2 (0.24%) Android
3 2 (0.24%) VMS
3 2 (0.24%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.12%) CentOS
4 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 464 (56.65%) Machine Learning
2 398 (48.60%) AI
3 320 (39.07%) Analytics
4 227 (27.72%) Data Pipeline
5 206 (25.15%) Problem-Solving
6 185 (22.59%) CI/CD
7 179 (21.86%) Agile
8 173 (21.12%) Data Engineering
9 157 (19.17%) LLM
10 156 (19.05%) Data Modelling
11 154 (18.80%) DevOps
12 153 (18.68%) Visualisation
13 146 (17.83%) Business Intelligence
14 137 (16.73%) Generative AI
15 132 (16.12%) Decision-Making
16 129 (15.75%) ETL
17 113 (13.80%) Computer Science
17 113 (13.80%) MLOps
18 108 (13.19%) Data Governance
19 102 (12.45%) Actionable Insight
Programming Languages
1 550 (67.16%) Python
2 319 (38.95%) SQL
3 91 (11.11%) R
4 67 (8.18%) Java
5 33 (4.03%) JavaScript
5 33 (4.03%) Scala
6 28 (3.42%) C++
7 19 (2.32%) TypeScript
8 16 (1.95%) C#
9 15 (1.83%) Bash
10 13 (1.59%) PowerShell
11 12 (1.47%) PL/SQL
12 10 (1.22%) Bicep
13 7 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 7 (0.85%) MATLAB
14 6 (0.73%) C
15 5 (0.61%) Go
15 5 (0.61%) T-SQL
16 4 (0.49%) F#
17 3 (0.37%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 146 (17.83%) Security Cleared
2 145 (17.70%) Degree
3 99 (12.09%) SC Cleared
4 47 (5.74%) Master's Degree
5 44 (5.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 23 (2.81%) PhD
7 18 (2.20%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.83%) MCP
9 14 (1.71%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 13 (1.59%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.49%) CISSP
11 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (0.49%) Postgraduate
12 3 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.37%) Tableau Certification
13 2 (0.24%) CISM
13 2 (0.24%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.24%) DBS Check
14 1 (0.12%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (12.33%) Data Quality
2 33 (4.03%) QA
3 31 (3.79%) GDPR
4 17 (2.08%) Accessibility
5 16 (1.95%) EU AI Act
6 14 (1.71%) NIST
7 6 (0.73%) GxP
7 6 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.61%) WCAG
9 4 (0.49%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.49%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.12%) IFRS
12 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.12%) PMO
12 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 86 (10.50%) Docker
2 10 (1.22%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.61%) zsh
4 3 (0.37%) HDFS
5 2 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 89 (10.87%) Kubernetes
2 72 (8.79%) Terraform
3 10 (1.22%) Kibana
3 10 (1.22%) Kubeflow
4 8 (0.98%) ITRS Geneos
4 8 (0.98%) logstash
5 4 (0.49%) Grafana
6 3 (0.37%) Argo
6 3 (0.37%) Hadoop YARN
6 3 (0.37%) Oozie
6 3 (0.37%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.24%) Ansible
8 1 (0.12%) Podman
8 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 124 (15.14%) Databricks
2 123 (15.02%) Microsoft
3 61 (7.45%) Google
4 39 (4.76%) Foundry
5 26 (3.17%) OpenAI
6 19 (2.32%) SAP
7 14 (1.71%) Palantir
8 12 (1.47%) Splunk
9 11 (1.34%) Oracle
10 10 (1.22%) Pega
11 8 (0.98%) Salesforce
11 8 (0.98%) Solace
11 8 (0.98%) TIBCO
12 7 (0.85%) Informatica
13 5 (0.61%) Alteryx
13 5 (0.61%) Dataiku
13 5 (0.61%) ForgeRock
13 5 (0.61%) Sage
14 4 (0.49%) ServiceNow
14 4 (0.49%) Talend