Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 18 September 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 526 487
Rank change year-on-year +191 -39 +25
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 615 150 319
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.53% 0.30% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.57% 0.34% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 395 86 141
10th Percentile £52,500 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £62,500 £52,500 £49,396
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £72,500 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +10.34% +15.30% +3.93%
75th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +36.36% -8.33% -2.04%

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 107,455 44,314 74,420
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.24% 89.66% 95.24%
Number of salaries quoted 73,770 26,055 44,614
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,250 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,589 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.53% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 18 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
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 Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 18 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
England +202 569 £80,000 +10.34% 694
UK excluding London +105 327 £75,000 +36.36% 248
London +91 261 £90,000 +12.50% 475
Work from Home +87 158 £70,000 - 294
North of England +27 113 £80,000 +45.45% 73
Midlands +18 70 £69,610 -0.02% 40
North West +34 65 £75,000 +36.36% 45
East Midlands +18 65 £60,000 -25.00% 21
South East +11 58 £80,000 +88.24% 55
South West -42 51 £70,000 - 22
Yorkshire -11 36 £85,000 +54.55% 24
Wales - 14 £75,000 - 19
North East -57 12 £80,000 +53.85% 4
East of England -22 10 £62,500 +6.38% 19
Northern Ireland -71 7 £72,500 +81.25% 8
West Midlands -42 5 £75,000 +26.58% 19
Scotland +4 4 £75,013 +66.70% 14

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

For the 6 months to 18 September 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.

1 613 (99.67%) Data Science
2 329 (53.50%) Machine Learning
3 255 (41.46%) AI
4 233 (37.89%) Python
5 187 (30.41%) Analytics
6 120 (19.51%) SQL
7 93 (15.12%) MLOps
8 82 (13.33%) Actionable Insight
8 82 (13.33%) Degree
9 79 (12.85%) Statistics
10 78 (12.68%) Generative AI
11 77 (12.52%) Natural Language Processing
12 75 (12.20%) Azure
12 75 (12.20%) Mentoring
13 71 (11.54%) AWS
14 64 (10.41%) CI/CD
15 63 (10.24%) LLM
16 61 (9.92%) Predictive Modelling
16 61 (9.92%) Roadmaps
17 60 (9.76%) Decision-Making
18 57 (9.27%) GCP
19 54 (8.78%) Deep Learning
20 50 (8.13%) Mathematics
21 48 (7.80%) Agile
21 48 (7.80%) Problem-Solving
21 48 (7.80%) Software Engineering
21 48 (7.80%) Validation
22 47 (7.64%) PyTorch
23 46 (7.48%) Feature Engineering
24 44 (7.15%) Data Engineering

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 39 (6.34%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.98%) SAS
3 4 (0.65%) Apache
4 3 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.49%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.16%) R Markdown
Applications
1 4 (0.65%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.33%) SPSS
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 75 (12.20%) Azure
2 71 (11.54%) AWS
3 57 (9.27%) GCP
4 19 (3.09%) SaaS
5 18 (2.93%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.60%) Azure Machine Learning
7 8 (1.30%) dbt
8 5 (0.81%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (0.81%) Serverless
9 4 (0.65%) Amazon SageMaker
9 4 (0.65%) Azure AI
9 4 (0.65%) Azure Databricks
9 4 (0.65%) Snowflake
10 3 (0.49%) Anthropic Claude
10 3 (0.49%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.49%) Dataform
10 3 (0.49%) GitHub
10 3 (0.49%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 2 (0.33%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.65%) Software-Defined Radio
2 3 (0.49%) 5G
2 3 (0.49%) Broadband
3 2 (0.33%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.23%) Amazon Redshift
2 18 (2.93%) Power BI
3 15 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.79%) Tableau
5 8 (1.30%) Looker
6 7 (1.14%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.98%) Big Data
8 5 (0.81%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.65%) Flink
9 4 (0.65%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.49%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.49%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.49%) Metabase
10 3 (0.49%) Redis
11 2 (0.33%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.33%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.33%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.33%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 32 (5.20%) Git
2 11 (1.79%) MLflow
3 2 (0.33%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) JIRA
General
1 136 (22.11%) Finance
2 68 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (10.24%) Banking
4 60 (9.76%) Social Skills
5 43 (6.99%) Retail
6 36 (5.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (4.88%) Marketing
8 26 (4.23%) Financial Institution
9 25 (4.07%) Public Sector
10 18 (2.93%) Games
11 15 (2.44%) Legal
12 13 (2.11%) Law
13 11 (1.79%) Advertising
14 9 (1.46%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.98%) Manufacturing
16 6 (0.98%) Wearables
17 5 (0.81%) Automotive
17 5 (0.81%) Publishing
17 5 (0.81%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (7.64%) PyTorch
2 40 (6.50%) TensorFlow
3 28 (4.55%) Pandas
4 27 (4.39%) scikit-learn
5 24 (3.90%) Hugging Face
6 23 (3.74%) SpaCy
7 16 (2.60%) NumPy
8 11 (1.79%) LangChain
9 10 (1.63%) PySpark
10 9 (1.46%) XGBoost
11 6 (0.98%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.98%) SciPy
11 6 (0.98%) Terraform
12 5 (0.81%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.81%) Streamlit
13 4 (0.65%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.49%) Kafka
15 2 (0.33%) Flash
15 2 (0.33%) Flask
15 2 (0.33%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.18%) Algorithms
2 23 (3.74%) e-Learning
3 14 (2.28%) AI Agents
4 10 (1.63%) Credit Risk
5 9 (1.46%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.14%) Hedge funds
6 7 (1.14%) Social Media
7 6 (0.98%) Life Science
8 5 (0.81%) Pricing Data
9 4 (0.65%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.65%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.49%) Clustering
10 3 (0.49%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.33%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.33%) FMCG
11 2 (0.33%) Hackathon
11 2 (0.33%) Insider Threat
11 2 (0.33%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.49%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 613 (99.67%) Data Science
2 329 (53.50%) Machine Learning
3 255 (41.46%) AI
4 187 (30.41%) Analytics
5 93 (15.12%) MLOps
6 82 (13.33%) Actionable Insight
7 79 (12.85%) Statistics
8 78 (12.68%) Generative AI
9 77 (12.52%) Natural Language Processing
10 75 (12.20%) Mentoring
11 64 (10.41%) CI/CD
12 63 (10.24%) LLM
13 61 (9.92%) Predictive Modelling
13 61 (9.92%) Roadmaps
14 60 (9.76%) Decision-Making
15 54 (8.78%) Deep Learning
16 50 (8.13%) Mathematics
17 48 (7.80%) Agile
17 48 (7.80%) Software Engineering
17 48 (7.80%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 233 (37.89%) Python
2 120 (19.51%) SQL
3 20 (3.25%) R
4 4 (0.65%) C
4 4 (0.65%) Java
5 3 (0.49%) C++
5 3 (0.49%) Julia
5 3 (0.49%) Scala
6 2 (0.33%) Bash
6 2 (0.33%) VBA
7 1 (0.16%) C#
7 1 (0.16%) Gremlin
7 1 (0.16%) LookML
7 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 82 (13.33%) Degree
2 44 (7.15%) Security Cleared
3 39 (6.34%) Master's Degree
4 30 (4.88%) DV Cleared
5 29 (4.72%) PhD
6 9 (1.46%) DBS Check
7 7 (1.14%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.65%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.49%) CISSP
10 2 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.33%) GIAC
10 2 (0.33%) SANS
11 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CEH
11 1 (0.16%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.39%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (0.81%) EU AI Act
2 5 (0.81%) GDPR
3 3 (0.49%) QA
4 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 18 (2.93%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (2.44%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.33%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.33%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.33%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 43 (6.99%) Databricks
2 19 (3.09%) Google
3 18 (2.93%) Microsoft
4 12 (1.95%) LexisNexis
5 11 (1.79%) Workday
6 6 (0.98%) OpenAI
7 3 (0.49%) Oracle
7 3 (0.49%) PeopleSoft
7 3 (0.49%) Revolut
7 3 (0.49%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.33%) SYSPRO
9 1 (0.16%) Cognizant
9 1 (0.16%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.16%) Mistral
9 1 (0.16%) New Relic
9 1 (0.16%) SAP
9 1 (0.16%) Splunk