Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 April 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 420 412 453
Rank change year-on-year -8 +41 +84
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 327 232 494
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.55% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.62% 0.55%
Number of salaries quoted 230 109 256
10th Percentile £46,250 £41,650 £44,524
25th Percentile £55,000 £51,250 £52,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £64,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% -8.57% +7.69%
75th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £91,750 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +7.76% -10.77% +13.04%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 80,885 37,363 89,466
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.69% 89.33% 94.57%
Number of salaries quoted 51,875 23,453 66,238
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +13.21% -11.67%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%

Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Scientist over the 6 months to 20 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 20 April 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 +10 311 £70,000 +16.67% 135
UK excluding London -63 165 £62,500 +7.76% 81
London +70 152 £80,000 - 82
Work from Home -9 95 £65,000 +1.56% 69
North of England -25 53 £66,720 +21.31% 16
North West +2 41 £75,000 +50.00% 11
Midlands -19 39 £62,500 +38.89% 12
South West -68 35 £60,000 -16.66% 12
East Midlands -31 22 £63,750 +9.91% 9
South East -39 19 £40,000 -32.20% 37
West Midlands -36 17 £55,000 +22.22% 3
East of England -26 12 £86,725 +49.53% 3
Yorkshire -58 8 £66,720 +4.25% 4
Scotland -28 4 £100,000 +42.86% 3
North East -35 4 £64,610 +24.25% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 20 April 2026, 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 featuring Data Scientist in the job title.

1 315 (96.33%) Data Science
2 151 (46.18%) Machine Learning
3 130 (39.76%) Python
4 125 (38.23%) AI
5 96 (29.36%) Analytics
6 81 (24.77%) SQL
7 59 (18.04%) Degree
7 59 (18.04%) Visualisation
8 51 (15.60%) Decision-Making
9 43 (13.15%) Power BI
9 43 (13.15%) Power Platform
9 43 (13.15%) Security Cleared
10 39 (11.93%) Business Intelligence
11 38 (11.62%) Azure
11 38 (11.62%) Mathematics
12 37 (11.31%) Predictive Modelling
13 34 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
14 33 (10.09%) AWS
14 33 (10.09%) Data Visualisation
14 33 (10.09%) DV Cleared
15 32 (9.79%) R
15 32 (9.79%) Statistics
16 31 (9.48%) LLM
17 28 (8.56%) Mentoring
18 26 (7.95%) Actionable Insight
18 26 (7.95%) Tableau
19 25 (7.65%) Data Analysis
19 25 (7.65%) E-Commerce
19 25 (7.65%) MLOps
19 25 (7.65%) PyTorch

Data Scientist Skill Set
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 6 (1.83%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.61%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.92%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (3.06%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 43 (13.15%) Power Platform
2 38 (11.62%) Azure
3 33 (10.09%) AWS
4 17 (5.20%) GCP
5 13 (3.98%) dbt
6 7 (2.14%) Azure Machine Learning
6 7 (2.14%) Snowflake
7 6 (1.83%) Dataform
8 4 (1.22%) Amazon S3
8 4 (1.22%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (1.22%) Serverless
8 4 (1.22%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.92%) SaaS
10 2 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (0.61%) Dagster
11 1 (0.31%) Azure Data Factory
11 1 (0.31%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (0.31%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.22%) Broadband
2 3 (0.92%) Software-Defined Radio
3 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 1 (0.31%) Internet
4 1 (0.31%) LTE
4 1 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.31%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (13.15%) Power BI
2 26 (7.95%) Tableau
3 10 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.45%) Looker
4 8 (2.45%) SQL Server
5 6 (1.83%) Metabase
6 5 (1.53%) Big Data
7 4 (1.22%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.22%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.92%) QGIS
9 2 (0.61%) GIS
9 2 (0.61%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.61%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.31%) Delta Lake
10 1 (0.31%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.31%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (2.75%) Git
2 8 (2.45%) MLflow
3 1 (0.31%) JIRA
General
1 58 (17.74%) Analytical Skills
2 46 (14.07%) Social Skills
3 45 (13.76%) Finance
4 41 (12.54%) Retail
5 21 (6.42%) Marketing
6 20 (6.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 18 (5.50%) Public Sector
8 10 (3.06%) Publishing
9 8 (2.45%) Manufacturing
10 7 (2.14%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (1.53%) Banking
11 5 (1.53%) Games
11 5 (1.53%) Law
11 5 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.22%) Automotive
12 4 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.92%) Financial Institution
14 2 (0.61%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.61%) Legal
14 2 (0.61%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (7.65%) PyTorch
2 18 (5.50%) scikit-learn
3 16 (4.89%) TensorFlow
4 12 (3.67%) Pandas
5 9 (2.75%) EDI
6 6 (1.83%) NumPy
6 6 (1.83%) PySpark
6 6 (1.83%) XGBoost
7 4 (1.22%) Google JAX
7 4 (1.22%) JAX
7 4 (1.22%) LangChain
8 2 (0.61%) LlamaIndex
8 2 (0.61%) NetworkX
8 2 (0.61%) SpaCy
8 2 (0.61%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.31%) FastAPI
9 1 (0.31%) GeoPandas
9 1 (0.31%) Hugging Face
9 1 (0.31%) MapLibre
9 1 (0.31%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 12 (3.67%) Algorithms
1 12 (3.67%) Data Structures
2 10 (3.06%) FMCG
2 10 (3.06%) Greenfield Project
3 6 (1.83%) Product Ownership
4 3 (0.92%) AI Agents
4 3 (0.92%) Cloud Native
4 3 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
5 2 (0.61%) Contract for Difference
5 2 (0.61%) Credit Risk
5 2 (0.61%) e-Learning
5 2 (0.61%) Fixed Income
5 2 (0.61%) Insider Threat
6 1 (0.31%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.31%) FPGA
6 1 (0.31%) Life Science
6 1 (0.31%) Reinsurance
6 1 (0.31%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.31%) Social Network
6 1 (0.31%) Tandem
Processes & Methodologies
1 315 (96.33%) Data Science
2 151 (46.18%) Machine Learning
3 125 (38.23%) AI
4 96 (29.36%) Analytics
5 59 (18.04%) Visualisation
6 51 (15.60%) Decision-Making
7 39 (11.93%) Business Intelligence
8 38 (11.62%) Mathematics
9 37 (11.31%) Predictive Modelling
10 34 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
11 33 (10.09%) Data Visualisation
12 32 (9.79%) Statistics
13 31 (9.48%) LLM
14 28 (8.56%) Mentoring
15 26 (7.95%) Actionable Insight
16 25 (7.65%) Data Analysis
16 25 (7.65%) E-Commerce
16 25 (7.65%) MLOps
17 24 (7.34%) Storytelling
18 23 (7.03%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 130 (39.76%) Python
2 81 (24.77%) SQL
3 32 (9.79%) R
4 6 (1.83%) Julia
5 4 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (1.22%) T-SQL
6 1 (0.31%) C++
6 1 (0.31%) Scala
Qualifications
1 59 (18.04%) Degree
2 43 (13.15%) Security Cleared
3 33 (10.09%) DV Cleared
4 22 (6.73%) PhD
5 19 (5.81%) DBS Check
6 10 (3.06%) ACCA
6 10 (3.06%) CIMA
6 10 (3.06%) SC Cleared
7 5 (1.53%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.92%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.92%) CISSP
8 3 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.61%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.61%) GIAC
9 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.61%) SANS
10 1 (0.31%) CEH
10 1 (0.31%) CISM
10 1 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (5.50%) Data Quality
2 3 (0.92%) QA
3 2 (0.61%) GDPR
4 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 9 (2.75%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (2.45%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.61%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.61%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.61%) Kubeflow
2 2 (0.61%) Terraform
3 1 (0.31%) Argo
Vendors
1 16 (4.89%) Databricks
2 13 (3.98%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.36%) Google
4 10 (3.06%) Salesforce
5 6 (1.83%) ServiceNow
6 2 (0.61%) Civica
6 2 (0.61%) Northgate
6 2 (0.61%) Orchard
7 1 (0.31%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.31%) Mapbox
7 1 (0.31%) OpenAI