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 17 February 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 469 427 393
Rank change year-on-year -42 -34 +127
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 211 292 488
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.60% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.34% 0.65% 0.69%
Number of salaries quoted 145 99 257
10th Percentile £46,250 £37,700 £43,432
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 £82,500 £75,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £88,250 £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 61,522 44,882 71,097
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 91.58% 94.87%
Number of salaries quoted 38,726 23,250 55,591
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,259
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 17 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 17 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 -10 198 £65,000 +10.17% 119
London +62 113 £80,000 +8.11% 71
UK excluding London -90 91 £61,418 +6.81% 80
Work from Home -11 65 £60,000 - 54
North of England -50 28 £62,500 +8.70% 19
North West +2 21 £61,418 +11.67% 14
South West -45 19 £60,000 -14.29% 4
South East +13 16 £40,000 -32.20% 34
Midlands -8 16 £62,500 +38.89% 18
East Midlands +2 11 £62,500 +7.76% 9
East of England +21 5 £100,000 +72.41% 1
West Midlands -10 5 £66,720 +48.27% 9
Scotland -31 5 £100,000 - 1
Yorkshire -62 4 £64,610 +0.95% 3
North East -13 3 £62,500 +56.78% 2
Northern Ireland -23 2 £40,000 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 199 (94.31%) Data Science
2 112 (53.08%) Python
3 110 (52.13%) Machine Learning
4 92 (43.60%) AI
5 77 (36.49%) Analytics
6 58 (27.49%) Degree
7 54 (25.59%) SQL
8 45 (21.33%) Visualisation
9 37 (17.54%) Decision-Making
9 37 (17.54%) Predictive Modelling
9 37 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
10 34 (16.11%) Azure
11 32 (15.17%) Mathematics
11 32 (15.17%) Power BI
11 32 (15.17%) Power Platform
11 32 (15.17%) Security Cleared
12 31 (14.69%) Business Intelligence
12 31 (14.69%) PhD
13 28 (13.27%) Actionable Insight
14 26 (12.32%) DV Cleared
14 26 (12.32%) Natural Language Processing
15 25 (11.85%) LLM
15 25 (11.85%) Storytelling
16 23 (10.90%) Data Visualisation
16 23 (10.90%) Statistics
17 22 (10.43%) AWS
17 22 (10.43%) R
18 21 (9.95%) Generative AI
19 20 (9.48%) Data Analysis
19 20 (9.48%) Tableau

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 10 (4.74%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.95%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 2 (0.95%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (4.74%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 34 (16.11%) Azure
2 32 (15.17%) Power Platform
3 22 (10.43%) AWS
4 10 (4.74%) GCP
5 8 (3.79%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.32%) dbt
7 4 (1.90%) Azure Machine Learning
7 4 (1.90%) Dagster
8 2 (0.95%) Cloud Computing
8 2 (0.95%) Google Analytics
9 1 (0.47%) Adobe Analytics
9 1 (0.47%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.47%) Amazon SageMaker
9 1 (0.47%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (0.47%) Azure AI
9 1 (0.47%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.47%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (0.47%) Prefect
9 1 (0.47%) SaaS
9 1 (0.47%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.90%) Broadband
2 1 (0.47%) Internet
2 1 (0.47%) LTE
2 1 (0.47%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.47%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (15.17%) Power BI
2 20 (9.48%) Tableau
3 8 (3.79%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.32%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.37%) Big Data
7 3 (1.42%) Data Mining
7 3 (1.42%) QGIS
8 2 (0.95%) GIS
8 2 (0.95%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.95%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.95%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.47%) Geospatial Data
9 1 (0.47%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.47%) Pinecone
9 1 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.47%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 9 (4.27%) Git
2 6 (2.84%) MLflow
General
1 46 (21.80%) Social Skills
2 39 (18.48%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (18.01%) Finance
4 23 (10.90%) Retail
5 21 (9.95%) Marketing
6 14 (6.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (5.21%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.74%) Publishing
9 7 (3.32%) Banking
9 7 (3.32%) Financial Institution
10 5 (2.37%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.90%) Games
11 4 (1.90%) Law
11 4 (1.90%) Legal
12 3 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.95%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.95%) Social Housing
14 1 (0.47%) Advertising
14 1 (0.47%) Automotive
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (8.06%) PyTorch
1 17 (8.06%) TensorFlow
2 9 (4.27%) EDI
2 9 (4.27%) scikit-learn
3 6 (2.84%) LangChain
3 6 (2.84%) PySpark
3 6 (2.84%) SpaCy
4 4 (1.90%) Google JAX
4 4 (1.90%) JAX
5 3 (1.42%) Kafka
5 3 (1.42%) NumPy
5 3 (1.42%) Pandas
5 3 (1.42%) XGBoost
6 2 (0.95%) Hugging Face
6 2 (0.95%) NetworkX
6 2 (0.95%) pydantic
6 2 (0.95%) Streamlit
7 1 (0.47%) Faiss
7 1 (0.47%) LlamaIndex
7 1 (0.47%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 16 (7.58%) Algorithms
2 11 (5.21%) Data Structures
2 11 (5.21%) Greenfield Project
3 10 (4.74%) FMCG
4 6 (2.84%) e-Learning
5 5 (2.37%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.90%) AI Agents
6 4 (1.90%) Cloud Native
6 4 (1.90%) Life Science
7 3 (1.42%) Fixed Income
8 2 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.95%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.95%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.47%) Credit Risk
9 1 (0.47%) Genomics
9 1 (0.47%) Omics
9 1 (0.47%) Reinsurance
9 1 (0.47%) Social Media
9 1 (0.47%) Social Network
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.47%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (94.31%) Data Science
2 110 (52.13%) Machine Learning
3 92 (43.60%) AI
4 77 (36.49%) Analytics
5 45 (21.33%) Visualisation
6 37 (17.54%) Decision-Making
6 37 (17.54%) Predictive Modelling
6 37 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
7 32 (15.17%) Mathematics
8 31 (14.69%) Business Intelligence
9 28 (13.27%) Actionable Insight
10 26 (12.32%) Natural Language Processing
11 25 (11.85%) LLM
11 25 (11.85%) Storytelling
12 23 (10.90%) Data Visualisation
12 23 (10.90%) Statistics
13 21 (9.95%) Generative AI
14 20 (9.48%) Data Analysis
15 19 (9.00%) Computer Science
15 19 (9.00%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 112 (53.08%) Python
2 54 (25.59%) SQL
3 22 (10.43%) R
4 1 (0.47%) C++
4 1 (0.47%) Scala
Qualifications
1 58 (27.49%) Degree
2 32 (15.17%) Security Cleared
3 31 (14.69%) PhD
4 26 (12.32%) DV Cleared
5 15 (7.11%) Master's Degree
6 12 (5.69%) DBS Check
7 10 (4.74%) ACCA
7 10 (4.74%) CIMA
7 10 (4.74%) SC Cleared
8 4 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.42%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.47%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.47%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.74%) Data Quality
2 3 (1.42%) GDPR
3 2 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.47%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (0.47%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 8 (3.79%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (2.37%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.47%) Argo
2 1 (0.47%) Terraform
Vendors
1 12 (5.69%) Microsoft
1 12 (5.69%) Salesforce
2 10 (4.74%) Databricks
3 3 (1.42%) Google
4 2 (0.95%) Civica
4 2 (0.95%) Northgate
4 2 (0.95%) Orchard
4 2 (0.95%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (0.47%) Adobe
5 1 (0.47%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.47%) Cognos
5 1 (0.47%) Facebook
5 1 (0.47%) Foundry
5 1 (0.47%) Mapbox
5 1 (0.47%) Marketo
5 1 (0.47%) OpenAI