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 18 December 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 500 470 459
Rank change year-on-year -30 -11 +80
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 148 268 258
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.47% 0.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.28% 0.50% 0.56%
Number of salaries quoted 94 113 175
10th Percentile £44,437 £37,758 £45,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,879 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +11.32% -10.91% +8.58%
75th Percentile £85,000 £77,500 £94,375
90th Percentile £93,500 £93,700 £110,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £60,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +4.17% -7.69% +9.99%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
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 52,771 53,172 46,462
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.24% 93.59% 95.22%
Number of salaries quoted 32,471 28,551 36,094
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,250 £43,750 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £93,634 £97,500 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £48,500 £52,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year -7.62% - -

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025. 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 -3 140 £67,500 +7.35% 112
London +61 94 £75,000 +7.14% 57
UK excluding London -28 52 £62,500 +4.17% 86
Work from Home +7 38 £60,000 -4.58% 113
North of England -22 16 £62,500 -0.60% 11
North West +11 12 £67,500 +7.35% 9
South East +31 10 £55,000 -6.78% 34
Midlands -1 10 £58,750 +27.03% 10
East Midlands -2 8 £53,945 +2.27% 6
South West +17 7 £60,000 -9.43% 16
Scotland -14 5 £100,000 - 9
East of England +29 3 £58,750 +1.29% 5
West Midlands +10 2 £70,000 +64.71% 4
North East -5 2 £62,500 +21.66% 2
Yorkshire -32 2 £62,500 -0.60%
Northern Ireland -3 1 £40,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 18 December 2025, 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.

1 145 (97.97%) Data Science
2 102 (68.92%) Python
3 96 (64.86%) Machine Learning
4 73 (49.32%) Analytics
5 60 (40.54%) AI
6 55 (37.16%) SQL
7 50 (33.78%) Degree
8 45 (30.41%) Visualisation
9 36 (24.32%) PhD
10 34 (22.97%) Problem-Solving
11 33 (22.30%) Mathematics
12 32 (21.62%) Azure
12 32 (21.62%) Decision-Making
12 32 (21.62%) Master's Degree
13 31 (20.95%) AWS
14 29 (19.59%) Predictive Modelling
14 29 (19.59%) Statistics
15 24 (16.22%) Natural Language Processing
16 23 (15.54%) LLM
16 23 (15.54%) MLOps
17 21 (14.19%) Business Intelligence
17 21 (14.19%) Power BI
17 21 (14.19%) Power Platform
18 20 (13.51%) DevOps
19 19 (12.84%) Mentoring
20 18 (12.16%) Statistical Modelling
21 17 (11.49%) GCP
21 17 (11.49%) Statistical Analysis
22 16 (10.81%) Data Engineering
22 16 (10.81%) Data Pipeline

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 13 (8.78%) Apache Spark
2 5 (3.38%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.68%) Apache
3 1 (0.68%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 3 (2.03%) Chatbot
2 2 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (2.03%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 32 (21.62%) Azure
2 31 (20.95%) AWS
3 21 (14.19%) Power Platform
4 17 (11.49%) GCP
5 7 (4.73%) Snowflake
6 6 (4.05%) dbt
7 5 (3.38%) Dagster
8 3 (2.03%) Google Analytics
9 2 (1.35%) Amazon SageMaker
9 2 (1.35%) GitHub
9 2 (1.35%) Prefect
9 2 (1.35%) SaaS
10 1 (0.68%) Adobe Analytics
10 1 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.68%) Azure AI
10 1 (0.68%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.68%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.68%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.68%) Serverless
10 1 (0.68%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.70%) Broadband
2 1 (0.68%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (14.19%) Power BI
2 12 (8.11%) Tableau
3 7 (4.73%) Amazon Redshift
4 6 (4.05%) Big Data
5 5 (3.38%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (2.70%) Relational Database
6 4 (2.70%) SQL Server
7 2 (1.35%) Data Mining
7 2 (1.35%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (1.35%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (1.35%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.35%) QGIS
8 1 (0.68%) ClickHouse
8 1 (0.68%) GIS
8 1 (0.68%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.68%) Mixpanel
8 1 (0.68%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.68%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 7 (4.73%) Git
2 4 (2.70%) MLflow
General
1 40 (27.03%) Finance
2 34 (22.97%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (22.30%) Social Skills
4 18 (12.16%) Marketing
5 12 (8.11%) Law
6 11 (7.43%) Games
6 11 (7.43%) Retail
7 9 (6.08%) Banking
8 8 (5.41%) Financial Institution
9 7 (4.73%) Manufacturing
10 6 (4.05%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (3.38%) Public Sector
12 4 (2.70%) Legal
12 4 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (2.03%) Publishing
14 1 (0.68%) Billing
14 1 (0.68%) Digital Economy
14 1 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
14 1 (0.68%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (10.81%) scikit-learn
2 15 (10.14%) PyTorch
3 14 (9.46%) Pandas
4 13 (8.78%) TensorFlow
5 12 (8.11%) PySpark
6 8 (5.41%) NumPy
7 7 (4.73%) SpaCy
8 5 (3.38%) LangChain
8 5 (3.38%) XGBoost
9 3 (2.03%) Kafka
10 2 (1.35%) Django
10 2 (1.35%) Hugging Face
10 2 (1.35%) LightGBM
10 2 (1.35%) NetworkX
10 2 (1.35%) PostGIS
10 2 (1.35%) pydantic
10 2 (1.35%) Streamlit
11 1 (0.68%) Faiss
11 1 (0.68%) GeoPandas
11 1 (0.68%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 22 (14.86%) Algorithms
2 7 (4.73%) e-Learning
3 5 (3.38%) Reinsurance
4 4 (2.70%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.70%) Credit Risk
4 4 (2.70%) Data Structures
4 4 (2.70%) FMCG
4 4 (2.70%) Greenfield Project
4 4 (2.70%) Life Science
5 3 (2.03%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.35%) AI Agents
6 2 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.35%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.35%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.68%) Biopharmaceutical
7 1 (0.68%) Genomics
7 1 (0.68%) Omics
7 1 (0.68%) Social Network
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.68%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (97.97%) Data Science
2 96 (64.86%) Machine Learning
3 73 (49.32%) Analytics
4 60 (40.54%) AI
5 45 (30.41%) Visualisation
6 34 (22.97%) Problem-Solving
7 33 (22.30%) Mathematics
8 32 (21.62%) Decision-Making
9 29 (19.59%) Predictive Modelling
9 29 (19.59%) Statistics
10 24 (16.22%) Natural Language Processing
11 23 (15.54%) LLM
11 23 (15.54%) MLOps
12 21 (14.19%) Business Intelligence
13 20 (13.51%) DevOps
14 19 (12.84%) Mentoring
15 18 (12.16%) Statistical Modelling
16 17 (11.49%) Statistical Analysis
17 16 (10.81%) Data Engineering
17 16 (10.81%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 102 (68.92%) Python
2 55 (37.16%) SQL
3 12 (8.11%) R
4 2 (1.35%) T-SQL
5 1 (0.68%) JavaScript
5 1 (0.68%) Scala
Qualifications
1 50 (33.78%) Degree
2 36 (24.32%) PhD
3 32 (21.62%) Master's Degree
4 10 (6.76%) DBS Check
5 4 (2.70%) Security Cleared
6 3 (2.03%) ACCA
6 3 (2.03%) CIMA
6 3 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (2.03%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.35%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.68%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.68%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.68%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.35%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.35%) GDPR
2 2 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.68%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 12 (8.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (2.03%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.68%) Argo
Vendors
1 9 (6.08%) Databricks
2 5 (3.38%) Microsoft
2 5 (3.38%) Salesforce
3 3 (2.03%) Google
4 2 (1.35%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (0.68%) Adobe
5 1 (0.68%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.68%) Amplitude
5 1 (0.68%) Civica
5 1 (0.68%) Cognos
5 1 (0.68%) Facebook
5 1 (0.68%) Foundry
5 1 (0.68%) Mapbox
5 1 (0.68%) Mapinfo
5 1 (0.68%) Marketo
5 1 (0.68%) Northgate
5 1 (0.68%) Orchard
5 1 (0.68%) SAP