Data Science Job Trends

Data Science
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Data Science skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 132 92
Rank change year-on-year -26 -40 -20
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 892 1,186 1,694
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.48% 2.21% 3.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.83% 2.44% 3.40%
Number of salaries quoted 477 520 1,052
10th Percentile £42,500 £42,500 £42,269
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £68,750
Median % change year-on-year - +1.82% -1.79%
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £90,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £115,000 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £64,188 £57,500
% change year-on-year -6.52% +11.63% -8.00%

All Process & 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 permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 48,808 48,616 49,870
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.95% 90.71% 89.93%
Number of salaries quoted 28,796 23,669 37,967
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £51,971
% change year-on-year -9.09% +5.83% -5.51%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Science job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Science
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science

Data Science
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Science within the UK over the 6 months to 15 January 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
England -12 846 £70,000 - 1,036
London +20 460 £82,500 +10.00% 313
UK excluding London -49 389 £60,000 -6.52% 902
Work from Home -35 278 £67,000 +0.90% 356
South East -3 156 £56,250 -10.00% 330
North of England -37 88 £60,000 -4.88% 168
North West +9 57 £62,500 -3.10% 74
South West -18 55 £60,000 -14.29% 110
Midlands -12 53 £60,000 +3.90% 103
West Midlands -15 27 £65,500 +31.00% 34
Yorkshire -37 27 £57,500 +1.19% 68
East Midlands -11 26 £40,000 -51.52% 66
East of England +15 19 £75,000 +15.38% 114
Wales +9 9 £40,000 -50.00% 38
Scotland -53 9 £100,000 +76.96% 43
North East -6 4 £62,500 - 28
Northern Ireland -14 1 £40,000 -52.94% 14

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 69 (7.74%) Apache Spark
2 26 (2.91%) Apache Airflow
3 23 (2.58%) SharePoint
4 19 (2.13%) Apache
5 11 (1.23%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.78%) SAS
7 6 (0.67%) IIS
8 5 (0.56%) Confluence
9 3 (0.34%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.22%) Luigi
11 1 (0.11%) CMS
11 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 69 (7.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.78%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.34%) Stata
5 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (0.67%) Salesforce CRM
1 6 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.45%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.11%) Odoo
4 1 (0.11%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.11%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 266 (29.82%) Azure
2 230 (25.78%) AWS
3 144 (16.14%) GCP
4 136 (15.25%) Power Platform
5 43 (4.82%) Snowflake
6 39 (4.37%) Azure AI
7 35 (3.92%) Azure Machine Learning
8 32 (3.59%) SaaS
9 30 (3.36%) Amazon SageMaker
10 28 (3.14%) Vertex AI
11 27 (3.03%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (2.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 26 (2.91%) Serverless
13 23 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
13 23 (2.58%) GitHub
14 20 (2.24%) dbt
15 18 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
16 15 (1.68%) Amazon S3
17 14 (1.57%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.68%) Broadband
2 10 (1.12%) 4G
2 10 (1.12%) BGP
2 10 (1.12%) Cisco IOS
2 10 (1.12%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (1.12%) IOS XR
2 10 (1.12%) MPLS
3 7 (0.78%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.56%) Firewall
5 4 (0.45%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.45%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.45%) Modbus
5 4 (0.45%) Network Security
5 4 (0.45%) VLAN
5 4 (0.45%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.45%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.34%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.34%) MQTT
7 2 (0.22%) Internet
8 1 (0.11%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (14.46%) Power BI
2 114 (12.78%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (11.66%) Tableau
4 78 (8.74%) Data Lake
5 44 (4.93%) NoSQL
6 43 (4.82%) Big Data
7 40 (4.48%) Metadata
8 36 (4.04%) BigQuery
9 35 (3.92%) SQL Server
10 32 (3.59%) Amazon Redshift
11 30 (3.36%) Hadoop
12 26 (2.91%) Data Mining
12 26 (2.91%) DynamoDB
13 25 (2.80%) Elasticsearch
13 25 (2.80%) MongoDB
14 23 (2.58%) MySQL
15 20 (2.24%) Relational Database
16 19 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
17 18 (2.02%) Delta Lake
18 14 (1.57%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 52 (5.83%) Git
2 34 (3.81%) MLflow
3 18 (2.02%) ERwin
4 12 (1.35%) GitLab
5 7 (0.78%) JIRA
5 7 (0.78%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.56%) Burp Suite
7 4 (0.45%) ER Studio
7 4 (0.45%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.11%) JUnit
8 1 (0.11%) MSBuild
8 1 (0.11%) Selenium
8 1 (0.11%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.11%) TestNG
General
1 335 (37.56%) Finance
2 268 (30.04%) Social Skills
3 196 (21.97%) Analytical Skills
4 98 (10.99%) Marketing
5 90 (10.09%) Banking
6 77 (8.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 69 (7.74%) Pharmaceutical
8 56 (6.28%) Retail
9 55 (6.17%) Law
10 49 (5.49%) Financial Institution
11 31 (3.48%) Manufacturing
12 26 (2.91%) Public Sector
13 23 (2.58%) Legal
13 23 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
14 16 (1.79%) Telecoms
15 15 (1.68%) Health Technology
15 15 (1.68%) Publishing
16 13 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
16 13 (1.46%) Tech for Good
17 12 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 200 (22.42%) Senior
2 174 (19.51%) Data Scientist
3 149 (16.70%) Lead
4 128 (14.35%) Data Engineer
5 88 (9.87%) Analyst
6 67 (7.51%) Data Analyst
7 65 (7.29%) Senior Data Scientist
8 61 (6.84%) Developer
9 44 (4.93%) Architect
10 43 (4.82%) Senior Data Engineer
11 42 (4.71%) Consultant
12 39 (4.37%) Software Engineer
13 31 (3.48%) Data Architect
14 23 (2.58%) Senior Developer
15 20 (2.24%) Senior Manager
16 18 (2.02%) Data Science Engineer
16 18 (2.02%) Senior Analyst
17 17 (1.91%) Python Developer
18 16 (1.79%) Lead Data Engineer
18 16 (1.79%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (7.96%) PyTorch
2 64 (7.17%) TensorFlow
3 47 (5.27%) scikit-learn
4 44 (4.93%) PySpark
5 43 (4.82%) Pandas
6 40 (4.48%) React
7 33 (3.70%) LangChain
8 23 (2.58%) RESTful
9 22 (2.47%) NumPy
10 19 (2.13%) Kafka
11 16 (1.79%) Hugging Face
12 14 (1.57%) FastAPI
13 12 (1.35%) Swagger
14 11 (1.23%) HTML
14 11 (1.23%) REST
15 10 (1.12%) Django
15 10 (1.12%) FHIR
15 10 (1.12%) Jinja
15 10 (1.12%) NETCONF
15 10 (1.12%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 93 (10.43%) Life Science
2 83 (9.30%) Algorithms
3 48 (5.38%) Product Ownership
4 43 (4.82%) Self-Motivation
5 36 (4.04%) Management Information System
6 34 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (3.59%) Cloud Native
8 26 (2.91%) Data Structures
9 23 (2.58%) Onboarding
10 21 (2.35%) Pharmacovigilance
11 18 (2.02%) Reinsurance
12 16 (1.79%) AI Agents
13 15 (1.68%) Credit Risk
13 15 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
14 13 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (1.46%) Omics
15 11 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
15 11 (1.23%) Social Media
16 10 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
17 9 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.12%) Linux
2 6 (0.67%) Unix
3 4 (0.45%) Android
3 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.45%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 468 (52.47%) Analytics
2 457 (51.23%) AI
3 450 (50.45%) Machine Learning
4 223 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
5 219 (24.55%) Agile
6 214 (23.99%) Computer Science
7 199 (22.31%) Decision-Making
8 189 (21.19%) Business Intelligence
9 173 (19.39%) Data Engineering
10 164 (18.39%) Data Modelling
11 153 (17.15%) Data Governance
12 152 (17.04%) Data Pipeline
13 150 (16.82%) Data Analysis
14 148 (16.59%) Visualisation
15 143 (16.03%) ETL
16 139 (15.58%) Statistics
17 134 (15.02%) Mentoring
17 134 (15.02%) Roadmaps
18 132 (14.80%) CI/CD
19 126 (14.13%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 506 (56.73%) Python
2 305 (34.19%) SQL
3 76 (8.52%) R
4 61 (6.84%) Java
5 46 (5.16%) Scala
6 22 (2.47%) TypeScript
7 20 (2.24%) JavaScript
8 16 (1.79%) Go
8 16 (1.79%) VBA
9 14 (1.57%) C++
10 13 (1.46%) C#
11 12 (1.35%) MATLAB
12 11 (1.23%) Rust
13 9 (1.01%) ANSI SQL
14 7 (0.78%) Bicep
14 7 (0.78%) PHP
15 5 (0.56%) Bash
15 5 (0.56%) C
15 5 (0.56%) PowerShell
16 3 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 354 (39.69%) Degree
2 163 (18.27%) Master's Degree
3 94 (10.54%) PhD
4 87 (9.75%) Security Cleared
5 85 (9.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 67 (7.51%) SC Cleared
7 41 (4.60%) Numerate Degree
8 25 (2.80%) DV Cleared
9 18 (2.02%) MBA
10 16 (1.79%) DBS Check
11 11 (1.23%) Azure Certification
12 10 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 10 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (0.90%) PMI Certification
14 7 (0.78%) APMP
14 7 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.78%) PMP
15 5 (0.56%) CFA
16 3 (0.34%) SAP Certification
17 2 (0.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (16.48%) Data Quality
2 53 (5.94%) GDPR
3 43 (4.82%) GxP
4 36 (4.04%) Accessibility
5 26 (2.91%) QA
6 23 (2.58%) EU AI Act
7 22 (2.47%) Solvency II
8 21 (2.35%) HIPAA
8 21 (2.35%) PSD2
9 10 (1.12%) CDISC
9 10 (1.12%) HL7
10 7 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.45%) NIST
13 3 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 3 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 62 (6.95%) Docker
2 3 (0.34%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 52 (5.83%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.58%) Terraform
3 7 (0.78%) Ansible
4 4 (0.45%) Kubeflow
4 4 (0.45%) Nessus
4 4 (0.45%) Nmap
5 2 (0.22%) Argo
5 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.22%) Puppet
6 1 (0.11%) Nagios
Vendors
1 117 (13.12%) Databricks
2 79 (8.86%) Microsoft
3 71 (7.96%) Google
4 32 (3.59%) Alteryx
5 31 (3.48%) Bloomberg
6 28 (3.14%) OpenAI
7 27 (3.03%) Oracle
8 26 (2.91%) Salesforce
9 19 (2.13%) Cisco
10 17 (1.91%) SAP
11 15 (1.68%) Informatica
12 11 (1.23%) Talend
13 10 (1.12%) Palantir
14 8 (0.90%) Foundry
15 5 (0.56%) BT
15 5 (0.56%) Red Hat
16 4 (0.45%) Fortinet
16 4 (0.45%) IBM
16 4 (0.45%) Palo Alto
16 4 (0.45%) Splunk