Lead Data Scientist Job Trends in England

Lead Data Scientist
UK > England

The median Lead Data Scientist salary in England is £100,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 2 August 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 656 638 734
Rank change year-on-year -18 +96 +35
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Data Scientist 76 16 30
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.083% 0.037% 0.041%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.088% 0.040% 0.043%
Number of salaries quoted 48 15 27
10th Percentile £67,500 £46,500 £49,831
25th Percentile £75,026 £62,000 £64,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £85,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% +6.25% -5.88%
75th Percentile - £100,625 £110,625
90th Percentile £113,750 £106,250 £122,500
UK median annual salary £100,000 £85,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% +6.25% -5.88%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in England. 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in England with a recognized job title 86,552 39,594 69,134
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.29% 90.72% 94.77%
Number of salaries quoted 60,762 24,042 48,003
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,201 £75,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £97,500 £92,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%

Lead Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Lead Data Scientist' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

Lead Data Scientist job vacancy trend in England

Lead Data Scientist
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Scientist job vacancies in England.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Scientist job vacancies in England

Lead Data Scientist
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Data Scientist in England over the 6 months to 2 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead Data Scientist in England

Lead Data Scientist
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Lead Data Scientist within the England region over the 6 months to 2 August 2026. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -14 32 £100,000 +44.93% 26
Midlands - 27 £75,000 - 6
East Midlands - 25 £70,000 -
North of England -27 14 £77,513 -6.04% 9
North West +1 8 £72,513 -12.11% 4
Yorkshire - 5 £83,774 - 5
West Midlands - 2 £75,013 - 6
South West -68 1 £75,000 -11.76% 1
South East - 1 - - 2
North East - 1 £83,774 -
Lead Data Scientist
UK

Lead Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 2 August 2026, Lead Data Scientist job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the England region featuring Lead Data Scientist in the job title.

1 76 (100.00%) Data Science
2 46 (60.53%) Machine Learning
3 39 (51.32%) Python
4 35 (46.05%) Mentoring
5 30 (39.47%) Roadmaps
6 29 (38.16%) AI
6 29 (38.16%) SQL
7 26 (34.21%) Statistics
8 25 (32.89%) PyTorch
8 25 (32.89%) TensorFlow
9 23 (30.26%) Actionable Insight
9 23 (30.26%) Deep Learning
9 23 (30.26%) Hugging Face
9 23 (30.26%) Project Management
9 23 (30.26%) Software Engineering
10 22 (28.95%) Analytics
11 16 (21.05%) Customer Insight
12 15 (19.74%) Neural Network
13 11 (14.47%) Decision-Making
14 10 (13.16%) scikit-learn
15 9 (11.84%) Data Quality
15 9 (11.84%) Feature Engineering
15 9 (11.84%) LLM
15 9 (11.84%) Pandas
16 8 (10.53%) NumPy
16 8 (10.53%) Validation
17 7 (9.21%) Continuous Improvement
17 7 (9.21%) Data Pipeline
17 7 (9.21%) Product Strategy
17 7 (9.21%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Lead Data Scientist Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 2 (2.63%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 5 (6.58%) AWS
2 3 (3.95%) Amazon S3
2 3 (3.95%) Amazon SageMaker
2 3 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
2 3 (3.95%) Azure
2 3 (3.95%) Serverless
3 1 (1.32%) Power Platform
3 1 (1.32%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (7.89%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (3.95%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (3.95%) Data Lake
3 2 (2.63%) Apache Iceberg
3 2 (2.63%) Flink
3 2 (2.63%) Redis
4 1 (1.32%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.32%) Power BI
4 1 (1.32%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 6 (7.89%) Git
2 2 (2.63%) MLflow
General
1 47 (61.84%) Finance
2 11 (14.47%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (11.84%) Banking
4 8 (10.53%) Public Sector
5 5 (6.58%) Retail Banking
6 4 (5.26%) Retail
7 3 (3.95%) Social Skills
8 2 (2.63%) Marketing
9 1 (1.32%) Advertising
9 1 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (1.32%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (32.89%) PyTorch
1 25 (32.89%) TensorFlow
2 23 (30.26%) Hugging Face
3 10 (13.16%) scikit-learn
4 9 (11.84%) Pandas
5 8 (10.53%) NumPy
6 6 (7.89%) XGBoost
7 2 (2.63%) Kafka
8 1 (1.32%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 6 (7.89%) Credit Risk
2 2 (2.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (1.32%) AI Agents
3 1 (1.32%) Algorithms
3 1 (1.32%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (100.00%) Data Science
2 46 (60.53%) Machine Learning
3 35 (46.05%) Mentoring
4 30 (39.47%) Roadmaps
5 29 (38.16%) AI
6 26 (34.21%) Statistics
7 23 (30.26%) Actionable Insight
7 23 (30.26%) Deep Learning
7 23 (30.26%) Project Management
7 23 (30.26%) Software Engineering
8 22 (28.95%) Analytics
9 16 (21.05%) Customer Insight
10 15 (19.74%) Neural Network
11 11 (14.47%) Decision-Making
12 9 (11.84%) Feature Engineering
12 9 (11.84%) LLM
13 8 (10.53%) Validation
14 7 (9.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 7 (9.21%) Data Pipeline
14 7 (9.21%) Product Strategy
Programming Languages
1 39 (51.32%) Python
2 29 (38.16%) SQL
3 1 (1.32%) R
Qualifications
1 6 (7.89%) Security Cleared
2 5 (6.58%) Degree
3 4 (5.26%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.32%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.32%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (11.84%) Data Quality
2 5 (6.58%) EU AI Act
2 5 (6.58%) GDPR
Vendors
1 4 (5.26%) Databricks