Senior Data Scientist Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Senior Data Scientist
UK > UK excluding London

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK excluding London is £83,774 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 504 512 575
Rank change year-on-year +8 +63 -34
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 163 6 74
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.19% 0.017% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.21% 0.020% 0.14%
Number of salaries quoted 94 5 36
10th Percentile £70,750 £80,500 £49,396
25th Percentile £75,000 - £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £83,774 £85,000 £63,940
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +32.94% -5.27%
75th Percentile £94,497 - £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 - £80,625
UK median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -12.50%

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%

Senior Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Data Scientist' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Senior Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Senior Data Scientist
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

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

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

Senior Data Scientist
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

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

Salary histogram for Senior Data Scientist in the UK excluding London

Senior 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 Senior 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
North of England -7 67 £86,887 +5.32% 32
North West +11 38 £80,000 -3.03% 20
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 21
South East -13 34 £90,000 - 33
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 9
Yorkshire - 25 £90,000 - 11
South West -66 9 £75,000 -11.76% 15
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 8
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 12
North East - 4 £91,887 - 1
Northern Ireland - 4 £90,000 - 5
East of England - 3 £86,725 - 6
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 3
Senior Data Scientist
UK

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

For the 6 months to 20 September 2026, Senior 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 Senior Data Scientist in the job title.

1 163 (100.00%) Data Science
2 85 (52.15%) Machine Learning
3 50 (30.67%) Python
4 45 (27.61%) AI
5 37 (22.70%) Mentoring
5 37 (22.70%) SQL
6 31 (19.02%) Analytics
6 31 (19.02%) Roadmaps
7 30 (18.40%) Statistics
8 29 (17.79%) Software Engineering
9 27 (16.56%) PyTorch
10 26 (15.95%) Actionable Insight
10 26 (15.95%) TensorFlow
11 24 (14.72%) Deep Learning
12 23 (14.11%) Hugging Face
12 23 (14.11%) Project Management
13 16 (9.82%) Decision-Making
14 15 (9.20%) Customer Insight
14 15 (9.20%) Neural Network
15 14 (8.59%) Degree
16 13 (7.98%) Agile
16 13 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
17 11 (6.75%) LLM
17 11 (6.75%) SaaS
18 10 (6.13%) Coaching
18 10 (6.13%) Data Quality
18 10 (6.13%) Generative AI
19 9 (5.52%) CI/CD
19 9 (5.52%) Customer Requirements
19 9 (5.52%) R

Senior 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:

Application Platforms
1 2 (1.23%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (1.23%) SPSS
Cloud Services
1 11 (6.75%) SaaS
2 8 (4.91%) Azure
3 6 (3.68%) AWS
3 6 (3.68%) Azure Machine Learning
4 5 (3.07%) Power Platform
5 4 (2.45%) Amazon SageMaker
5 4 (2.45%) Azure Databricks
6 2 (1.23%) Amazon S3
6 2 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (1.23%) Dataform
6 2 (1.23%) dbt
6 2 (1.23%) Serverless
7 1 (0.61%) Anthropic Claude
7 1 (0.61%) GitHub
7 1 (0.61%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (0.61%) Google Gemini
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (3.07%) Power BI
1 5 (3.07%) Tableau
2 4 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (1.23%) Data Lake
3 2 (1.23%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
3 2 (1.23%) Looker
3 2 (1.23%) Metabase
4 1 (0.61%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 7 (4.29%) Git
2 1 (0.61%) MLflow
General
1 50 (30.67%) Finance
2 15 (9.20%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (7.98%) Public Sector
4 10 (6.13%) Social Skills
5 7 (4.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (3.68%) Wearables
7 5 (3.07%) Automotive
7 5 (3.07%) Banking
8 4 (2.45%) Retail
9 3 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.84%) Marketing
10 1 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.61%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (16.56%) PyTorch
2 26 (15.95%) TensorFlow
3 23 (14.11%) Hugging Face
4 7 (4.29%) PySpark
5 4 (2.45%) scikit-learn
6 3 (1.84%) Pandas
7 2 (1.23%) NumPy
7 2 (1.23%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 4 (2.45%) Algorithms
2 2 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (0.61%) AI Agents
3 1 (0.61%) Cloud Native
3 1 (0.61%) Credit Risk
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (100.00%) Data Science
2 85 (52.15%) Machine Learning
3 45 (27.61%) AI
4 37 (22.70%) Mentoring
5 31 (19.02%) Analytics
5 31 (19.02%) Roadmaps
6 30 (18.40%) Statistics
7 29 (17.79%) Software Engineering
8 26 (15.95%) Actionable Insight
9 24 (14.72%) Deep Learning
10 23 (14.11%) Project Management
11 16 (9.82%) Decision-Making
12 15 (9.20%) Customer Insight
12 15 (9.20%) Neural Network
13 13 (7.98%) Agile
13 13 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
14 11 (6.75%) LLM
15 10 (6.13%) Coaching
15 10 (6.13%) Generative AI
16 9 (5.52%) Customer Requirements
Programming Languages
1 50 (30.67%) Python
2 37 (22.70%) SQL
3 9 (5.52%) R
4 2 (1.23%) Julia
Qualifications
1 14 (8.59%) Degree
2 6 (3.68%) Security Cleared
3 4 (2.45%) DV Cleared
3 4 (2.45%) Master's Degree
4 2 (1.23%) DBS Check
4 2 (1.23%) Numerate Degree
5 1 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.13%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 42001
2 1 (0.61%) QA
Vendors
1 6 (3.68%) Databricks
2 4 (2.45%) Workday
3 2 (1.23%) Microsoft