Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 7 February 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 460 395
Rank change year-on-year +4 -65 +123
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 202 252 489
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.50% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.34% 0.54% 0.69%
Number of salaries quoted 133 103 260
10th Percentile £46,250 £37,758 £43,899
25th Percentile £55,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -14.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £75,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £87,050 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £57,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +6.81% -11.54% +9.99%

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 59,224 46,587 70,587
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.01% 91.89% 94.95%
Number of salaries quoted 36,943 24,097 55,321
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,520
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -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 7 February 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 7 February 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 +19 190 £65,000 +10.17% 143
London +83 117 £80,000 +14.29% 107
UK excluding London -51 79 £61,418 +6.81% 68
Work from Home +16 58 £60,000 -3.23% 60
North of England -49 24 £61,959 +12.65% 13
North West +15 20 £61,418 +11.67% 9
South East +6 16 £40,000 -32.20% 35
South West -5 15 £60,000 -14.29% 8
Midlands -7 13 £62,500 +38.89% 8
East Midlands -3 9 £62,500 +7.76% 6
East of England +26 5 £100,000 +72.41% 1
Scotland -31 5 £100,000 - 2
West Midlands +1 4 £70,000 +55.56% 2
North East -11 2 £62,500 +56.78% 1
Yorkshire -47 2 £62,500 -2.34% 3
Northern Ireland -20 1 £40,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 7 February 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.

1 190 (94.06%) Data Science
2 111 (54.95%) Machine Learning
3 108 (53.47%) Python
4 87 (43.07%) AI
5 79 (39.11%) Analytics
6 54 (26.73%) Degree
7 49 (24.26%) SQL
8 46 (22.77%) Visualisation
9 39 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
10 36 (17.82%) Predictive Modelling
11 35 (17.33%) Decision-Making
12 34 (16.83%) PhD
13 33 (16.34%) Azure
14 31 (15.35%) Power BI
14 31 (15.35%) Power Platform
15 30 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
16 27 (13.37%) Mathematics
16 27 (13.37%) Storytelling
17 26 (12.87%) Actionable Insight
17 26 (12.87%) Natural Language Processing
17 26 (12.87%) Statistics
18 24 (11.88%) Security Cleared
19 23 (11.39%) AWS
19 23 (11.39%) Data Visualisation
20 22 (10.89%) Business Strategy
20 22 (10.89%) LLM
21 21 (10.40%) Master's Degree
22 20 (9.90%) Data Analysis
22 20 (9.90%) Data Modelling
22 20 (9.90%) Generative AI

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 11 (5.45%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.99%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 3 (1.49%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (4.95%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 33 (16.34%) Azure
2 31 (15.35%) Power Platform
3 23 (11.39%) AWS
4 11 (5.45%) GCP
5 8 (3.96%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.47%) dbt
7 4 (1.98%) Dagster
8 2 (0.99%) Azure Machine Learning
8 2 (0.99%) Google Analytics
9 1 (0.50%) Adobe Analytics
9 1 (0.50%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.50%) Amazon SageMaker
9 1 (0.50%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (0.50%) Azure AI
9 1 (0.50%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.50%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.50%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.50%) Prefect
9 1 (0.50%) SaaS
9 1 (0.50%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.98%) Broadband
2 1 (0.50%) Internet
2 1 (0.50%) LTE
2 1 (0.50%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.50%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (15.35%) Power BI
2 19 (9.41%) Tableau
3 8 (3.96%) Amazon Redshift
3 8 (3.96%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.48%) Big Data
4 5 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.49%) QGIS
6 2 (0.99%) Data Mining
6 2 (0.99%) GIS
6 2 (0.99%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.99%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.99%) Spatial Data
7 1 (0.50%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.50%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.50%) Pinecone
7 1 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.50%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (3.96%) Git
2 5 (2.48%) MLflow
General
1 47 (23.27%) Social Skills
2 39 (19.31%) Finance
3 36 (17.82%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (12.38%) Retail
5 23 (11.39%) Marketing
6 10 (4.95%) Publishing
7 9 (4.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (3.96%) Banking
8 8 (3.96%) Financial Institution
8 8 (3.96%) Games
9 7 (3.47%) Law
10 5 (2.48%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.98%) Legal
11 4 (1.98%) Public Sector
12 3 (1.49%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.99%) Advertising
14 1 (0.50%) Billing
14 1 (0.50%) Digital Economy
14 1 (0.50%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (9.41%) PyTorch
2 16 (7.92%) TensorFlow
3 10 (4.95%) scikit-learn
4 9 (4.46%) EDI
5 8 (3.96%) PySpark
6 7 (3.47%) SpaCy
7 5 (2.48%) LangChain
7 5 (2.48%) NumPy
7 5 (2.48%) Pandas
8 4 (1.98%) Google JAX
8 4 (1.98%) JAX
8 4 (1.98%) XGBoost
9 3 (1.49%) Kafka
10 2 (0.99%) NetworkX
10 2 (0.99%) pydantic
10 2 (0.99%) Streamlit
11 1 (0.50%) Faiss
11 1 (0.50%) Hugging Face
11 1 (0.50%) LlamaIndex
11 1 (0.50%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 19 (9.41%) Algorithms
2 11 (5.45%) Data Structures
2 11 (5.45%) Greenfield Project
3 10 (4.95%) FMCG
4 7 (3.47%) e-Learning
5 5 (2.48%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.98%) Cloud Native
6 4 (1.98%) Life Science
7 3 (1.49%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.49%) Fixed Income
8 2 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.99%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.99%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.50%) Clustering
9 1 (0.50%) Credit Risk
9 1 (0.50%) Digital Media
9 1 (0.50%) Reinsurance
9 1 (0.50%) Social Media
9 1 (0.50%) Social Network
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (94.06%) Data Science
2 111 (54.95%) Machine Learning
3 87 (43.07%) AI
4 79 (39.11%) Analytics
5 46 (22.77%) Visualisation
6 39 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
7 36 (17.82%) Predictive Modelling
8 35 (17.33%) Decision-Making
9 30 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
10 27 (13.37%) Mathematics
10 27 (13.37%) Storytelling
11 26 (12.87%) Actionable Insight
11 26 (12.87%) Natural Language Processing
11 26 (12.87%) Statistics
12 23 (11.39%) Data Visualisation
13 22 (10.89%) Business Strategy
13 22 (10.89%) LLM
14 20 (9.90%) Data Analysis
14 20 (9.90%) Data Modelling
14 20 (9.90%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 108 (53.47%) Python
2 49 (24.26%) SQL
3 17 (8.42%) R
4 1 (0.50%) C++
4 1 (0.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 54 (26.73%) Degree
2 34 (16.83%) PhD
3 24 (11.88%) Security Cleared
4 21 (10.40%) Master's Degree
5 19 (9.41%) DV Cleared
6 10 (4.95%) ACCA
6 10 (4.95%) CIMA
6 10 (4.95%) DBS Check
6 10 (4.95%) SC Cleared
7 4 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.99%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.50%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.96%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.99%) GDPR
2 2 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.50%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.50%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 8 (3.96%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.49%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.50%) Argo
Vendors
1 12 (5.94%) Salesforce
2 11 (5.45%) Microsoft
3 8 (3.96%) Databricks
4 2 (0.99%) Google
4 2 (0.99%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (0.50%) Adobe
5 1 (0.50%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.50%) Civica
5 1 (0.50%) Cognos
5 1 (0.50%) Facebook
5 1 (0.50%) Foundry
5 1 (0.50%) Mapbox
5 1 (0.50%) Marketo
5 1 (0.50%) Northgate
5 1 (0.50%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.50%) Orchard