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 2 September 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 493 538 589
Rank change year-on-year +45 +51 -22
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 155 9 69
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.19% 0.026% 0.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.029% 0.12%
Number of salaries quoted 92 8 40
10th Percentile £67,625 £70,000 £49,396
25th Percentile £75,000 £75,625 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £83,774 £85,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +30.77% -1.57%
75th Percentile £92,988 - £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,875 £85,375
UK median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -6.67%

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 75,726 31,085 55,379
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.09% 89.42% 95.12%
Number of salaries quoted 52,623 17,936 34,751
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £37,500
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 £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% - -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 2 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 2 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 +11 64 £83,774 +1.54% 27
North West +22 38 £80,000 -3.03% 13
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 16
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 5
South East -16 22 £90,000 - 36
Yorkshire - 22 £90,000 - 11
South West -64 11 £75,000 -11.76% 9
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 2
East of England - 7 £86,725 - 11
Northern Ireland - 5 £90,000 - 4
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 11
North East - 4 £91,887 - 3
Scotland +2 2 £75,013 +7.16% 6
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 2 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.

1 155 (100.00%) Data Science
2 81 (52.26%) Machine Learning
3 53 (34.19%) Python
4 43 (27.74%) AI
4 43 (27.74%) Mentoring
5 41 (26.45%) SQL
6 34 (21.94%) Analytics
7 29 (18.71%) Roadmaps
7 29 (18.71%) Statistics
8 27 (17.42%) PyTorch
8 27 (17.42%) Software Engineering
9 26 (16.77%) Actionable Insight
9 26 (16.77%) TensorFlow
10 24 (15.48%) Deep Learning
11 23 (14.84%) Hugging Face
11 23 (14.84%) Project Management
12 16 (10.32%) Customer Insight
13 15 (9.68%) Data Quality
13 15 (9.68%) Neural Network
14 14 (9.03%) Decision-Making
15 13 (8.39%) Degree
15 13 (8.39%) R
16 12 (7.74%) LLM
17 11 (7.10%) Agile
17 11 (7.10%) CI/CD
17 11 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
17 11 (7.10%) Data Engineering
17 11 (7.10%) SaaS
18 10 (6.45%) Business Intelligence
18 10 (6.45%) Coaching

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 (1.29%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (1.29%) SPSS
Cloud Services
1 11 (7.10%) SaaS
2 10 (6.45%) Power Platform
3 7 (4.52%) AWS
4 6 (3.87%) Dataform
4 6 (3.87%) dbt
5 5 (3.23%) Amazon SageMaker
5 5 (3.23%) Azure
6 3 (1.94%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.94%) Azure Machine Learning
6 3 (1.94%) Serverless
7 2 (1.29%) Azure Databricks
8 1 (0.65%) Anthropic Claude
8 1 (0.65%) GitHub
8 1 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.65%) Google Gemini
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (6.45%) Power BI
1 10 (6.45%) Tableau
2 8 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (3.87%) Looker
3 6 (3.87%) Metabase
4 3 (1.94%) Amazon Athena
5 2 (1.29%) Data Lake
5 2 (1.29%) Data Mining
5 2 (1.29%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 4 (2.58%) Git
2 1 (0.65%) MLflow
General
1 53 (34.19%) Finance
2 22 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (8.39%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.81%) Social Skills
5 6 (3.87%) Banking
5 6 (3.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 6 (3.87%) Wearables
6 5 (3.23%) Automotive
6 5 (3.23%) Marketing
6 5 (3.23%) Retail
7 4 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.65%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.65%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (17.42%) PyTorch
2 26 (16.77%) TensorFlow
3 23 (14.84%) Hugging Face
4 5 (3.23%) PySpark
4 5 (3.23%) scikit-learn
5 4 (2.58%) Pandas
6 3 (1.94%) NumPy
7 2 (1.29%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 2 (1.29%) Algorithms
1 2 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (0.65%) AI Agents
2 1 (0.65%) Cloud Native
2 1 (0.65%) Credit Risk
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (100.00%) Data Science
2 81 (52.26%) Machine Learning
3 43 (27.74%) AI
3 43 (27.74%) Mentoring
4 34 (21.94%) Analytics
5 29 (18.71%) Roadmaps
5 29 (18.71%) Statistics
6 27 (17.42%) Software Engineering
7 26 (16.77%) Actionable Insight
8 24 (15.48%) Deep Learning
9 23 (14.84%) Project Management
10 16 (10.32%) Customer Insight
11 15 (9.68%) Neural Network
12 14 (9.03%) Decision-Making
13 12 (7.74%) LLM
14 11 (7.10%) Agile
14 11 (7.10%) CI/CD
14 11 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
14 11 (7.10%) Data Engineering
15 10 (6.45%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 53 (34.19%) Python
2 41 (26.45%) SQL
3 13 (8.39%) R
4 6 (3.87%) Julia
Qualifications
1 13 (8.39%) Degree
2 7 (4.52%) Security Cleared
3 6 (3.87%) DBS Check
4 5 (3.23%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.29%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.29%) Numerate Degree
6 1 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.65%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (9.68%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.29%) QA
3 1 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 42001
Vendors
1 4 (2.58%) Databricks
1 4 (2.58%) Workday
2 2 (1.29%) Microsoft