Lead Data Scientist Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Lead Data Scientist
UK > UK excluding London

The median Lead Data Scientist salary in the UK excluding London is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 598 513 633
Rank change year-on-year -85 +120 -73
Permanent jobs requiring a Lead Data Scientist 66 5 16
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.077% 0.015% 0.029%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.083% 0.016% 0.030%
Number of salaries quoted 40 5 12
10th Percentile £72,500 £80,500 £49,396
25th Percentile £75,000 - £49,939
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £85,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +30.77% -29.94%
75th Percentile £100,000 - £80,000
90th Percentile - - -
UK median annual salary £100,000 £85,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% +21.43% -17.65%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

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

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 79,503 30,639 52,619
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.31% 89.30% 95.21%
Number of salaries quoted 55,058 17,449 30,640
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +6.36% - -8.33%

Lead Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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 the UK excluding London.

Lead Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Lead Data Scientist
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Lead Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Lead Data Scientist
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Lead Data Scientist in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 20 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Lead Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Lead Data Scientist
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 20 September 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
Midlands - 25 £75,000 - 9
East Midlands - 23 £75,000 - 3
North of England -55 19 £83,774 +1.54% 10
Yorkshire - 12 £91,887 - 3
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 2
South East - 8 £75,000 - 8
North West -21 6 £72,513 -12.11% 7
South West -73 2 £75,000 -11.76% 3
West Midlands - 2 £75,013 - 6
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £100,000 - 4
North East - 1 £83,774 -
Lead Data Scientist
UK

Lead Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 20 September 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 UK excluding London region featuring Lead Data Scientist in the job title.

1 66 (100.00%) Data Science
2 58 (87.88%) Machine Learning
3 32 (48.48%) Mentoring
4 31 (46.97%) Python
5 30 (45.45%) AI
6 26 (39.39%) PyTorch
6 26 (39.39%) Statistics
6 26 (39.39%) TensorFlow
7 24 (36.36%) Deep Learning
7 24 (36.36%) Roadmaps
7 24 (36.36%) Software Engineering
8 23 (34.85%) Actionable Insight
8 23 (34.85%) Hugging Face
8 23 (34.85%) Project Management
9 22 (33.33%) SQL
10 19 (28.79%) Analytics
11 15 (22.73%) Customer Insight
11 15 (22.73%) Neural Network
12 11 (16.67%) LLM
13 10 (15.15%) Generative AI
14 9 (13.64%) Decision-Making
15 7 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
16 6 (9.09%) AWS
16 6 (9.09%) B2B
16 6 (9.09%) Customer Experience
16 6 (9.09%) MLOps
16 6 (9.09%) SaaS
16 6 (9.09%) Security Cleared
16 6 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
17 5 (7.58%) Coaching

Lead Data Scientist Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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:

Cloud Services
1 6 (9.09%) AWS
1 6 (9.09%) SaaS
2 4 (6.06%) Amazon SageMaker
3 2 (3.03%) Amazon S3
3 2 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
3 2 (3.03%) Azure
3 2 (3.03%) Power Platform
3 2 (3.03%) Serverless
4 1 (1.52%) Anthropic Claude
4 1 (1.52%) Google Gemini
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (3.03%) Amazon Athena
1 2 (3.03%) Data Lake
1 2 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (3.03%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
1 2 (3.03%) Power BI
1 2 (3.03%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (1.52%) Git
General
1 42 (63.64%) Finance
2 10 (15.15%) Public Sector
3 9 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (6.06%) Banking
5 3 (4.55%) Social Skills
6 1 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.52%) Marketing
6 1 (1.52%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (39.39%) PyTorch
1 26 (39.39%) TensorFlow
2 23 (34.85%) Hugging Face
3 4 (6.06%) scikit-learn
4 3 (4.55%) Pandas
5 2 (3.03%) NumPy
6 1 (1.52%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 1 (1.52%) AI Agents
1 1 (1.52%) Cloud Native
1 1 (1.52%) Credit Risk
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (100.00%) Data Science
2 58 (87.88%) Machine Learning
3 32 (48.48%) Mentoring
4 30 (45.45%) AI
5 26 (39.39%) Statistics
6 24 (36.36%) Deep Learning
6 24 (36.36%) Roadmaps
6 24 (36.36%) Software Engineering
7 23 (34.85%) Actionable Insight
7 23 (34.85%) Project Management
8 19 (28.79%) Analytics
9 15 (22.73%) Customer Insight
9 15 (22.73%) Neural Network
10 11 (16.67%) LLM
11 10 (15.15%) Generative AI
12 9 (13.64%) Decision-Making
13 7 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
14 6 (9.09%) B2B
14 6 (9.09%) MLOps
14 6 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 31 (46.97%) Python
2 22 (33.33%) SQL
3 2 (3.03%) R
Qualifications
1 6 (9.09%) Security Cleared
2 5 (7.58%) Degree
3 4 (6.06%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.06%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 42001
Vendors
1 2 (3.03%) Databricks
1 2 (3.03%) Workday
2 1 (1.52%) Microsoft